'Gothic

Architecture and Scholasticism

:;
An inquiry into the analogy of tlie arts,
philosophy, and religion in the Middle Ages.
ERWIn PANOFSKY

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 I

Gothic Architecture and Scholasticism

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Gothic Architecture
and Scholasticism

by Erwin Panofsky

@
A MERIDIAN BOOK
INieVU AMERICAIVi LiBRAfyy
NEW YORK. LONDON AND SCARBOROUGH. ONTARIO

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 —

Copyright 1951, 1957 by Saint Vincent Archabbey

All rights reserved.

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 57-6681

MERIDIAN TRADEMARK REG. U.S. PAT. OFF.

®AND FOREIGN COUNTRIES
REGISTERED TRADEMARK MARCA REGISTRADA
HECHO EN WESTFORD, MASS., U.S.A.
Signet, Signet Classics, Mentor, Plume, Meridian and
NAL Books are published in the United States by
The New American Library, Inc.,
1633 Broadway, New York, New York 10019,
in Canada by The New American Library of Canada Limited,
81 Mack Avenue, Scarborough, Ontario MIL 1M8
First Printing/ World Publishing Company, 1957
First Printing/New American Library, March, 1976
4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
 Foreword

Professor Erwin Panofsky's study, Gothic Architec-

ture and Scholasticism, captured and holds an eminent

place in a series that is not without distinction, the

Wimmer Lectures. Established in memory of the

founder of the Benedictine Order in America, Boni-

face Wimmer, the series has brought to St. Vincent

College such fine scholars as Jacques Maritain (Man's

Approach to God"), William F. Albright ("Toward

a Theistic Humanism"), Helen C. White ("Prayer
and Poetry"), and Elias A. Lowe ("The Finest Book
in the World").
Boniface Wimmer would surely have approved the

matter and the manner of this lecture. In a letter

written nearly a hundred years ago he said:

In a country like America . . . religion and art must work

together to give our liturgy an outward splendor, great
dignity, and even grandeur. . . . Therefore the monas-
teries have a solemn duty to foster art, especially religious

art, to improve it and to spread it, because our shop-

keepers and our farmers will never do that. I am firmly

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vi Foreword

convinced that a monastic school which does not strive to

advance art as much as science and religion will be de-

ficient in its work. In scientific matters shortcomings may
be more readily condoned, at least in the beginning, but
neglect in the promotion of art must be censured.

Nine decades have not diminished the force of these

words.

Professor Panofsky represents that firm, mature,

and humane learning that is the ideal and the despair

of so many. Since 1935 he has been associated with

the School of Humanistic Studies at The Institute for

Advanced Study, Princeton, New Jersey. His career

before that took him from his native Hanover to the

universities of Berlin, Munich, Freiburg, and Ham-

burg. An authority on iconology, medieval, renaissance,
and baroque art, and Dutch and Flemish book illumi-

nation, he has been a lecturer or professor at various

universities in the United States.

Knowledge as comprehensive in its grasp and diver-

sification as it is precise and sure in detail, brilliant

insight and penetrating analysis, stimulating, radiant,

 Foreword \ii

and artistic presentation— these are qualities it is cus-

tomary to take for granted in a study by Professor

Panofsky. It is a source of satisfaction to see his provoc-

ative lecture made available to a wider public through

Meridian Books. Extremely heavy demands upon Pro-

fessor Panofsky's time have prevented him from intro-

ducing into the text revisions he would now consider

desirable. We do not hesitate to issue the text in its

original form, quite willing to let it stand on its own

merits.

+ QUENTIN L. SCHAUT, O.S.B.

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 List of Illustrations

Figure i.
Tombstone of the Architect Hugues Libergier (died
1263), Reims Cathedral.

Figure 2.
Autun Cathedral, west portal. Ca. 11 30.

Figure 3,
Paris, Notre-Dame, central portal of the west fa9ade
(much restored) Ca. 121^-1220.
.

Figure 4,
Henry I of France bestowing privileges upon the Priory
of St.-Martin-des-Champs, Book illumination between
1079 and 1096, London, British Museum, ms. Add.
1 162, fol. 4.

Figure 5.
Henry I of France bestowing privileges upon the Priory
of St.-Martin-des-Champs. Book illumination of ca,

1250, Paris, Bibliotheque Nationale, ms. Nouv. Acq.

lat. 1359, fol. I.

Figure 6.
Philip I of France bestowing privileges upon the Priory
of St.-Martin-des-Champs. Book illumination between

IX

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 Illustrations

1079 and 1096, London, British Museum, ms. Add.

1 162, fol. £ V.

Figure 7.
Philip I of France bestowing privileges upon the Priory
of St. -Martin-des- Champs. Book illumination of ca.

125^0, Paris, Bibliotheque Nationale, ms. Nouv. Acq.

lat. 13^9, fol. 6.

Figure 8,
Maria Laach, Abbey Church from the northwest. 1093-
II 56.

Figure p.
Pima (Saxony), Marienkirche, interior. Begun 1502.

Figure 10,
Cluny, Third Abbey Church, groundplan, io88-cd.
1 1 20 ; narthex ca. 1 1 lo-ca. go. (After K. J. Conant,
1 1

**The Third Church of Cluny,*' Medieval Studies in

Memory of A. Kingsley Porter, Cambridge, 1939.)

Figure 11,
Amiens Cathedral, groundplan. Begun 1220.

Figure 12.
Sens Cathedral, groimdplan. Constructed ca. 114.0-ca.
1 168. (After E. Gall, Die gotische Baukunst in Frankreich
und Deutschland, Leipzig, 192^).

Figure 13.
Laon Cathedral, groundplan. Begun ca. 1160.
 . .

Illustrations

Figure 14.
Laon Cathedral from the northwest. Begun ca, 1160.

Figure 15,
Reims Cathedral from the northwest. Begun 1 2 1 1

Figure 16,
Amiens Cathedral from the northeast. Begun 1220.

Figure J J.

Lessay (Normandy), Abbey Church, interior. End of the

Xlth century.

Figure 18,
Laon Cathedral, interior of the choir. Begun after 1205
in conformity with elevation designed ca, 1160.

Figure 19,
Chartres Cathedral, interior of the nave. Begun shortly
after 1 1 94.

Figure 20.
Reims Cathedral, interior of the nave. Begun 1 2 1 1

Figure 21,
Amiens Cathedral, interior of the nave. Begun 1220.

Figure 22,
St.-Denis, interior of the nave. Begun 1231.

Figure 23.
Caen, St.-Ettienne, vaults of the northern transept. Ca.
mo. (After E. Gall, op. cit.)

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 . .

Illustrations

Figure 24.
Soissons Cathedral, vaults of the southern side aisle in
course of restoration after World War I. Beginning of
the Xlllth century.

Figure 25.
Soissons Cathedral, section of the northern nave wall
damaged during World War I. Beginning of the Xlllth
century.

Figure 26.
Chartres Cathedral, flying buttress of the nave. Design
established shortly after 1194.

Figure 27.
Reims Cathedral, Madonna in the right hand portal of
the northern transept. Ca. 1 2 1 i-i 2 1 2

Figure 28.
Durham Cathedral, concealed flying buttresses. End of
the XI th century. (After R. W. Billings, Architectural

Illustrations and Description of the Cathedral Church of Dur-

ham, London, 1843.)

Figure 29.
Reims Cathedral, open flying buttresses of the nave.

Design established ca. 1 2 1 1

Figure 30.
St.-Denis, w^est fa9ade. Dedicated 1140. (After an en-

Xll
 Illustrations

graving by A. and E. Rouargue, executed before the

restoration of 1 833-1 837.)

Figure 31,
Paris, Notre-Dame, west facade. Begun shortly after
1 200 ; clerestory ca. 1220.

Figure 32,
Laon Cathedral, west fa9ade. Designed ca, 11 60; exe-
cuted from cfl. 1 190.

Figure 33-
Amiens, west facade. Begun 1220; clerestory com-
pleted 1236; tracery of the rose ca. 1500,

Figure 34-
Reims, St.-Nicaise (destroyed), west fa9ade. Between
ca. 1230 and 1263; rose restored ca. 1550. (After an
engraving by N. de Son, of 1625.)

Figure 35.
Reims, St.-Nicaise (destroyed), rose in the west
facade (partial reconstruction).

Figure 36.
Reims Cathedral, nave window. Designed ca. 1211.

Figure 37-
Caen, Ste.-Trinite, triforium. Ca. mo.
Figure 3S.
Sens Cathedral, triforium galleries. Towards 11 50.

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 Illustrations

Figure 39-
Noyon Cathedral, nave galleries and triforium. Design
established ca. 1170; eastern bay executed between
1 1 70 and 1 1 85, rest later.

Figure 40,
Chalons-sur-Mame, Notre-Dame-en-Vaux, choir galler-
ies and triforium. Ca. 1 185^.

Figure 41 .

Chartres Cathedral, nave triforium. Design established

ca. 1 194.

Figure 42.
Reims Cathedral, nave triforium. Design established
ca. i2i I.

Figure 43.
Villard de Honnecourt, interior elevation of Reims
Cathedral. Drawling of ca. 1235, Paris, Bibliotheque
Nationale (enlarged detail).

Figure 44.
Amiens Cathedral, nave triforium. Design established
ca. 1220.

Figure 45.
St.-Denis, nave triforium. Design established ca. 1231.

Figure 46.
Canterbury Cathedral, choir piers. 1
1
74-1 178.

xiv
 Illustrations

Figure 47.
Chartres Cathedral, capital of nave pier. Design estab-
lished ca. 1 194.

Figure 48,
Reims Cathedral, capital of nave pier. Design established
ca. 121 1.

Figure 49.
Amiens Cathedral, capital of nave pier. Design estab-
lished ca. 1220.

Figure SO.
St. -Denis, capital of nave pier. Design established ca,

1231.

Figure 5/.
Amiens Cathedral, cross section of pier in relation to
wall and vault-ribs. Design established ca. 1220.

Figure £2.
St. -Denis, cross section of pier in relation to wall and
vault-ribs. Design established ca. 1231.

Figure 53,
Cologne Cathedral, cross section of pier in relation to

wall and vault-ribs. Design established ca. 1248.

Figure 54,
Canterbury Cathedral, capital of pier. 11 74-1 178 (dia-

gram).

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 Illustrations

Figure 55.
Chartres Cathedral, capital of pier. Design established
shortly after 1
194 (diagram).

Figure 56.
Reims Cathedral, capital of pier. Design established ca.

121 1 (diagram).

Figure 57-
Amiens Cathedral, capital of pier. Design established ca.

1220 (diagram).

Figure 58.
Beauvais Cathedral, capital of pier. Design established
ca. 1247 (diagram).

Figure 39-
St. -Denis, capital of pier. Design established ca. 1231
(diagram).

Figure 60.
Villard de Honnecourt, ideal groundplan of a chevet
from his discussion with Pierre de Corbie.
resulting
Drawing of ca. 1235, Paris, Bibliotheque Nationale.

XVI
 Gothic Architecture and
Scholasticism

HISTORIAN CANNOT HELP DIVIDING

THE his material into ^^periods,'* nicely de-

fined in the Oxford Dictionary as **dis-

tinguishable portions of history.*' To

be distinguishable, each of these portions has to

have a certain unity ; and if the historian w^ishes to

verify this unity instead of merely presupposing it,

he must needs try to discover intrinsic analogies

between such overtly disparate phenomena as the

arts, literature, philosophy, social and political

currents, religious movements, etc. This effort,

laudable and even indispensable in itself, has led to

a pursuit of **parallels'' the hazards of w^hich are

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 Gothic Architecture

only too obvious. No man can master more than

one fairly limited field; every man has to rely on

incomplete and often secondary information v^hen-

ever he ventures ultra crepidam, Yew men can resist

the temptation of either ignoring or slightly de-

flecting such lines as refuse to run parallel, and even

a genuine parallelism does not make us really

happy if we cannot imagine how it came about.

Small wonder, then, that another diffident attempt

at correlating Gothic architecture and Scholasti-

cism' is bound to be looked upon with suspicion by

both historians of art and historians of philosophy.

Yet, setting aside for the moment all intrinsic

analogies, there exists between Gothic architecture

and Scholasticism a palpable and hardly accidental

concurrence in the purely factual domain of time

and place — a concurrence so inescapable that the

historians of mediaeval philosophy, uninfluenced

by ulterior considerations, have been led to period-

2
 And Scholasticism

ize their material in precisely the same way as do

the art historians theirs.

To the Carolingian revival of the arts there cor-

responds, in philosophy, the phenomenon of John

the Scot (ca, 810-877), equally magnificent,

equally unexpected, and equally charged with po-

tentialities not to be realized until a much later

date. About a hundred years of fermentation in

both fields were followed, in art, by the variety and

contrariety of Romanesque which ranges from the

planar simplicity of the Hirsau school and the severe

structuralism of Normandy and England to the rich

proto-classicism of southern France and Italy ; and,

in theology and philosophy, by a similar multiplic-

ity of divergent currents, from uncompromising

fideism (Peter Damian, Manegold of Lautenbach

and, ultimately, St. Bernard) and ruthless rational-

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 Gothic Architecture

ism (Berenger of Tours, Roscellinus) to the proto-

humanism of Hildebert of Lavardin, Marbod of

Rennes and the school of Chartres.
Lanfranc and Anselm of Bee (the former died in

1089, the latter in 1 109) made a heroic attempt to

settle the conflict between reason and faith before

the principles of such a settlement had been ex-

plored and formulated. This exploration and formu-

lation was initiated by Gilbert de la Porree (died

11^4) and Abelard (died 1142). Thus Early Scho-

lasticism was bom at the same moment and in the

same environment in which Early Gothic architec-

ture was bom in Suger*s Saint-Denis. For both

the new style of thinking and the new style of build-

ing (opus Francigenum) —though brought about by

**many masters from different nations,** as Suger

said of his artisans, and soon developing into truly

international movements —spread from an area com-

 —

And Scholasticism

prised within a circle drawn around Paris with a

radius of less than a hundred miles. And they con-

tinued to be centered in this area for about one

century and a half.

Here High Scholasticism is generally assumed to

begin with the turn of the twelfth century, pre-

cisely when the High Gothic system achieved its

first triumphs in Chartres and Soissons ; and here a

*
'classic*' or climactic phase was reached in both

fields during the reign of St. Louis (122 6- 1270). It

was in this period that there flourished such High

Scholastic philosophers as Alexander of Hales,

Albert the Great, William of Auvergne, St. Bona-

venture, and St. Thomas Aquinas and such High

Gothic architects as Jean le Loup, Jean d'Orbais,

Robert de Luzarches, Jean de Chelles, Hugues

Libergier, and Pierre de Montereau; and the dis-

tinctive features of High— as opposed to Early

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Gothic Architecture

Scholasticism are remarkably analogous to those

which characterize High — as opposed to Early

Gothic art.

It has justly been remarked that the gentle ani-

mation that distinguishes the Early Gothic figures

in the west facade of Chartres from their Roman-

esque predecessors reflects the renewal of an in-

terest in psychology which had been dormant for

several centuries;^ but this psychology was still

based upon the Biblical —and Augustinian—dichot-

omy between the ** breath of life'' and the **dust of

the ground.*' The infinitely more lifelike —though

not, as yet, portraitlike —High Gothic statues of

Reims and Amiens, Strassburg and Naumburg and

the natural —though not, as yet, naturalistic

fauna and flora of High Gothic ornament proclaim

the victory of Aristotelianism. The human soul,

though recognized as immortal, was now held to

be the organizing and unifying principle of the body

 And Scholasticism

itself rather than a substance independent thereof.

A plant was thought to exist as a plant and not as

the copy of the idea of a plant. The existence of

God was believed to be demonstrable from His

creation rather than a priori.^

In formal organization, too, the High Scholastic

Summa differs from the less comprehensive, less

strictly organized, and much less uniform encyclo-

pedias and Lihri Sententiarum of the eleventh and

twelfth centuries much in the same way as does the

High Gothic style from its ancestry. In fact, the

very word summa (first used as a book title by the

jurists) did not change its meaning from a **brief

compendium'* (singulorum brevis comprehensio or

compendiosa coUectio, as Robert of Melun defined it

in 1 1 i^o) to a presentation both exhaustive and sys-

tematic, from Summary'' to summa

*
as we know it,

until the final lustra of the twelfth century.* The

earliest fully developed specimen of this new kind,

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 Gothic Architecture

the Summa Theologiae by Alexander of Hales, which,

according to Roger Bacon, **
weighed about as much
as one horse can carry," was begun in 1231, the

very year in which Pierre de Montereau began the

new nave of St. -Denis.

The fifty or sixty years after the death of Saint

Louis in 1270 (or, if we prefer, that of St. Bona-

venture and St. Thomas in 1274) mark what is

called the end phase of High Scholasticism by the

historians of philosophy, and the end phase of High
Gothic by the historians of art
—phases in which
the various developments, however important, do

not as yet add up to a fundamental change in atti-

tude but rather manifest themselves in a gradual

decomposition of the existing system. Both in in-

tellectual and in artistic life —including music,

which from about 1 170 had been dominated by the

school of Notre-Dame in Paris —we can observe a

growing trend towards decentralization. The cre-

8
 And Scholasticism

ative impulses tended to shift from what had been

the center to what had been the periphery: to

South France, to Italy, to the Germanic countries,

and to England, which, in the thirteenth century

had shown a tendency toward splendid isolation.^

A decrease of confidence in the supremely syn-

thetic power of reason which had triumphed in

Thomas Aquinas may be discerned, and this re-

sulted in a resurgence —on an entirely different

level, to be sure — of currents suppressed during

the ** classic*' phase. The Summa was again displaced

by less systematic and ambitious types of presenta-

tion. Pre-Scholastic Augustinianism (asserting,

among other things, ttie independence of the will

from the intellect) was vigorously revived in oppo-

sition to Thomas, and Thomas's anti-Augustinian

tenets were solemnly condemned three years after
*
his death. Similarly, the 'classic" cathedral type

was abandoned in favor of other, less perfectly sys-

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 Gothic Architecture

tematized and often somewhat archaic solutions;

and in the plastic arts we can observe the revival of

a pre-Gothic tendency toward the abstract and the

linear.

The doctrines of ** classic'' High Scholasticism

either stiffened into school traditions, or were sub-
jected to vulgarization in popular treatises such as

the Somme-le-Rof (1279) and the Tesoretto by Bru-

netto Latini, or were elaborated and subtilized to

the limits of human capacity (not without reason

does the greatest representative of this period,

Duns Scotus, who died in 1308, bear the agnomen

Doctor Subtilis). Similarly, ** classic'' High Gothic

either became doctrinaire, to use Dehio's phrase,

or was reduced and simplified (especially in the

mendicant orders), or was refined and complicated

into the harp work of Strassburg, the embroidery of

Freiburg, and the flowing tracery of Hawton or

Lincoln. But it was not until the end of this period

10
 —

And Scholasticism

that a basic change announced itself; and it was not

until the middle of the fourteenth century — in

histories of philosophy the conventional date for

the shift from High to Late Scholasticism is 1340,

when the teachings of William of Ockham had
made so much headway that they had to be con-

demned — that this change became thoroughly and

universally effective.

By this time the energies of High Scholasticism

setting aside the ossified schools of Thomists and

Scotists that persisted much as academic painting

survived and survives after Manet —had either been

channelled into poetry and, ultimately, humanism

through Guido Cavalcanti, Dante, and Petrarch; or

into anti-rational mysticism through Master Eck-

hart and his followers. And insofar as philosophy

remained Scholasticism in the strict sense of the

term, it tended to become agnostic. Apart from the

Averroists —^who became more and more an iso-

11

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 Gothic Architecture

lated sect as time went on — this happened in that

mighty movement, rightly called **modem*' by the

later schoolmen, which began with Peter Aureolus

(ca. 1280— 1323) and came to fruition in William of

Ockham (ca. 129^-1 349 or 1 3i^o): in critical nom-
inalism C'criticar* as opposed to the dogmatic,

pre-Scholastic nominalism associated with the

name of Roscellinus and apparently quite dead for

nearly 200 years). In contrast even to the Aristotel-

ian, the nominalist denies all real existence to uni-

versal and grants it only to particulars, so that the

nightmare of the High Scholastics —the problem of

the principium individuationis by virtue of which The
Universal Cat materializes into an infinite number
of particular cats — dissolved into nothingness. As
**
Peter Aureolus puts it, every thing is individual by

virtue of itself and by nothing else*' (omnis res est se

ipsa singularis et per nihil aliud).

On the other hand, there reappeared the eternal

12
 And Scholasticism

dilemma of empiricism : since the quality of reality

belongs exclusively to that which can be appre-

hended by notitia intuitiva, that is, to the particular

*
'things*' directly perceived by the senses, and to
the particular psychological states or acts (joy,

grief, willing, etc.) directly known through inner

experience, all that which is real, viz., the world of

physical objects and the world of psychological
processes, can never be rational, while all that

which is rational, viz., the concepts distilled from

these two worlds by notitia abstractiva, can never be

real ; so that all metaphysical and theological prob-

lems —including the existence of God, the immor-

tality of the soul, and in at least one case (Nicholas

of Autrecourt) even causation —can be discussed

only in terms of probability.^

The conmion denominator of these new currents

is, of course, subjectivism — ^aesthetic subjectivism

in the case of the poet and humanist, religious sub-

13

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 Gothic Architecture

jectivism in that of the mystic, and epistemological

subjectivism in that of the nominaUst. In fact,

these two extremes, mysticism and nominalism,

are, in a sense, nothing but opposite aspects of the

same thing. Both mysticism and nominahsm cut the

tie between reason and faith. But mysticism —much
more emphatically divorced from Scholasticism in

the generation of Tauler, Suso, and John of Ruys-

broeck than in that of Master Eckhart —does so in

order to save the integrity of religious sentiment,

while nominalism seeks to preserve the integrity of

rational thought and empirical observation (Ock-

ham explicitly denounces as ** temerarious" any

*
attempt to subject 'logic, physics, and grammar"

to the control of theology).

Both mysticism and nominalism throw the indi-

vidual back upon the resources of private sensory

and psychological experience; intuitus is a favorite

term and central concept of Master Eckhart as well

14
 And Scholasticism

as of Ockham. But the mystic depends on his senses

as purveyors of visual images and emotional stimuli,

w^hereas the nominalist relies on them as conveyors

of reality ; and the intuitus of the mystic is focused

upon a unity beyond the distinction even between

man and God and even between the Persons of the

Trinity, whereas the intuitus of the nominalist is

focused upon the multiplicity of particular things

and psychological processes. Both mysticism and

nominalism end up with abolishing the borderline

between the finite and the infinite. But the mystic

tends to infinitize the ego because he believes in the

self-extinction of the human soul in God, whereas

the nominalist tends to infinitize the physical world

because he sees no logical contradiction in the idea

of an infinite physical universe and no longer ac-

cepts the theological objections thereto. Small

wonder that the nominalistic school of the four-

teenth century anticipated the heliocentric system

15

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 Gothic Architecture

of Copernicus, the geometrical analysis of Des-

cartes, and the mechanics of Galileo and Newton.

Similarly, Late Gothic art broke up into a variety

of styles reflecting these regional and ideological

differences. But this variety, too, is unified by a

subjectivism which, in the visual sphere, corre-

sponds to what can be observed in intellectual life.

The most characteristic expression of this subjec-

tivism is the emergence of a perspective interpreta-

tion of space which, originating with Giotto and

Duccio, began to be accepted everywhere from

1330-40. In redefining the material painting or

drawing surface as an immaterial projection plane,

perspective—however imperfectly handled at the

beginning —renders account, not only of what is

seen but also of the way it is seen under particular

conditions i It records, to borrow Ockham's term,

the direct intuitus from subject to object, thus pav-

ing the way for modem *

'naturalism** and lending

16
 And Scholasticism

visual expression to the concept of the infinite ; for

the perspective vanishing point can be defined only

as **the projection of the point in which parallels

intersect.*'

We understandably think of perspective as a de-

vice of only the tw^o-dimensional arts. However,

this new way of seeing — or, rather, of designing

with reference to the very process of sight —was

bound to change the other arts as well. The sculp-

tors and architects also began to conceive of the

forms they shaped, not so much in terms of isolated

solids as in terms of a comprehensive **

picture

space,'* although this **picture space*' constitutes

itself in the beholder's eye instead of being pre-

sented to him in a prefabricated projection. The

three-dimensional media, too, supply, as it were,

material for a pictorial experience. This is true of

all Late Gothic sculpture —even if the pictorial

principle is not carried so far as in Claus Sluter's

17

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 Gothic Architecture

stagelike portal of Champmol, the typical fifteenth-

century *'Schnitzaltar," or those trick figures that

look up a spire or down from a balcony; and it is

also true of ** Perpendicular'' architecture in Eng-

land and of the new types of hall church and semi-

hall church in the Germanic countries.

All this applies not only to those innovations

which may be said to reflect the empiristic and par-

ticularistic spirit of nominalism : the landscape and

the interior with concomitant emphasis on genre

features, and the autonomous and completely indi-

vidualized portrait which represents the sitter, as

Peter Aureolus would say, as ** something individ-

ual by virtue of itself and nothing else," where

somewhat earlier likenesses merely superimpose,

as it were, a Scotian haecceitas upon a still typified

image. It also applies to those new Andachtsbilder

which are commonly associated with mysticism:

18
 And Scholasticism

the Pietd, St. John on the Bosom of the Lord, the

Man of Sorrows, Christ in the Winepress, etc. In

their own way, such ** images for worship by em-

pathy," as the term may be paraphrased, are no less

*
'naturalistic," often to the point of gruesomeness,

than are the portraits, landscapes, and interiors

which have been mentioned; and where the por-

traits, landscapes, and interiors induce a sense of

infinity by making the beholder aware of the unend-

ing variety and limitlessness of God's creation, the

Andachtsbilder induce a sense of infinity by permit-

ting the beholder to submerge his being in the

boundlessness of the Creator Himself. Once more

nominalism and mysticism prove to be les extremes

qui se touchent. We can easily see that these appar-

ently irreconcilable tendencies could variously in-

terpenetrate in the fourteenth century and ulti-

mately merge, for one glorious moment, in the

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painting of the great Flemings, much as they did in

the philosophy of their admirer, Nicholas of Cusa,

who died in the same year as Roger van der Weyden.

II

During the ** concentrated'* phase of this aston-

ishingly synchronous development, viz., in the

period between about 1130-40 and about 1270,

we can observe, it seems to me, a connection be-

tween Gothic art and Scholasticism which is more

concrete than a mere *
^parallelism" and yet more
general than those individual (and very important)

** influences" which are inevitably exerted on

painters, sculptors, or architects by erudite advis-

ers. In contrast to a mere parallelism, the connec-

tion which I have in mind is a genuine cause-and-

effect relation; but in contrast to an individual in-

fluence, this cause-and-effect relation comes about

by diffaision rather than by direct impact. It comes

20
 And Scholasticism

about by the spreading of what may be called, for

want of a better term, a mental habit —reducing

this overworked cliche to its precise Scholastic

sense as a '^principle that regulates the act,'' prin-

cipium importans ordinem ad actum, "^

Such mental
habits are at work in all and every civilization. All

modem writing on history is permeated by the idea

of evolution (an idea the evolution of which needs

much more study than it has received thus far and

seems to enter a critical phase right now) ; and all

of us, without a thorough knowledge of biochem-

istry or psychoanalysis, speak with the greatest of

ease of vitamin deficiencies, allergies, mother fixa-

tions, and inferiority complexes.

Often it is difficult or impossible to single out

one habit-forming force from many others and to

imagine the channels of transmission. However, the

period from about 1 130-40 to about 1 270 and the

** IOC-mile zone around Paris'' constitute an ex-

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ception. In this tight little sphere Scholasticism

possessed what amounted to a monopoly in educa-

tion. By and large, intellectual training shifted from

the monastic schools to institutions urban rather

than rural, cosmopolitan rather than regional, and,

so to speak, only half ecclesiastic : to the cathedral

schools, the universities, and the studia of the new

mendicant orders —nearly of them products of
all

the thirteenth century—whose members played an

increasingly important role within the universities

themselves. And as the Scholastic movement, pre-

pared by Benedictine learning and initiated by Lan-

franc and Anselm of Bee, was carried on and

brought to fruition by the Dominicans and Francis-

cans, so did the Gothic style, prepared in Bene-

dictine monasteries and initiated by Suger of St.-

Denis, achieve its culmination in the great city

churches. It is significant that during the Roman-

esque period the greatest names in architectural

22
 And Scholasticism

history are those of Benedictine abbeys, in the

High Gothic period those of cathedrals, and in the

Late Gothic periods those of parish churches.

It is not very probable that the builders of Gothic

structures read Gilbert de la Porree or Thomas

Aquinas in the original. But they were exposed to

the Scholastic point of view in innumerable other

ways, quite apart from the fact that their own work
automatically brought them into a working asso-

ciation with those who devised the liturgical and

iconographic programs. They had gone to school;

they listened to sermons; they could attend the

public disputationes de quolibet which, dealing as

they did with all imaginable questions of the day, had

developed into social events not unlike our operas,

concerts, or public lectures;* and they could come

into profitable contact with the learned on many
other occasions. The very fact that neither the

natural sciences nor the humanities nor even

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mathematics had evolved their special esoteric

methods and terminologies kept the whole of

human know^ledge w^ithin the range of the normal,

non-specialized intellect; and —perhaps the most

important point —the entire social system was

rapidly changing toward an urban professionalism.

Not as yet hardened into the later guild and ''Bau-

hiitten" systems, it provided a meeting ground

where the priest and the layman, the poet and the
lawyer, the scholar and the artisan could get to-

gether on terms of near-equality. There appeared

the professional, town-dwelling publisher (statio-

narius, hence our ** stationer''), who, more or less

strictly supervised by a university, produced manu-

script books en masse with the aid of hired scribes,

together with the bookseller (mentioned from

about 1 170), the book-lender, the bookbinder, and

the book-illuminator (by the end of the thirteenth

24
 And Scholasticism

century the enlumineurs already occupied a whole

street in Paris); the professional, town-dwelling

painter, sculptor, and jeweller; the professional,

town-dwelling scholar who, though usually a

cleric, yet devoted the substance of his life to writ-

ing and teaching (hence the words ** scholastic**

and ** scholasticism'*); and, last but not least, the

professional, town-dwelling architect.

This professional architect

— ^
*
professional* * in

contradistinction to the monastic equivalent of

what in modern times is called the gentleman archi-

tect —would rise from the ranks and supervise the

work in person. In doing so he grew into a man of

the world, widely travelled, often well read, and

enjoying a social prestige unequalled before and

unsurpassed since. Freely selected propter sagacita-

tem ingeniiy he drew a salary envied by the lower

clergy and would appear at the site, *

'carrying

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gloves and a rod'' (virga)y to give those curt

orders that became a byword in French literature

whenever a writer wished to describe a man who

does things well and with superior assurance: ^'Par

cy me le taille.^^^ His portrait would figure together

with that of the founding bishop in the ''laby-

rinths" of the great cathedrals. After Hugues Liber-

gier, the master of the lost St.-Nicaise in Reims,

had died in 1263, he was accorded the unheard-of

honor of being immortalized in an effigy that shows

him not only clad in something like academic garb

but also carrying a model of *'his'' church — a priv-

ilege previously accorded only to princely donors

(fig. i). And Pierre de Montereau —indeed the

most logical architect who ever lived— is desig-

nated on his tombstone in St.-Germain-des-Pres as

^* Doctor Lathomorum'': by 1267, it seems, the

architect himself had come to be looked upon as a

kind of Scholastic.

26
 And Scholasticism

III

When asking in what manner the mental habit

induced by Early and High Scholasticism may have

affected the formation of Early and High Gothic

architecture, we shall do well to disregard the
notional content of the doctrine and to concen-

trate, to borrow a term from the schoolmen them-

selves, upon its modus operandi. The changing ten-

ets in such matters as the relation between soul and

body or the problem of universals vs. particulars

naturally were reflected in the representational

arts rather than in architecture. True, the architect

lived in close contact with the sculptors, glass

painters, wood carvers, etc., whose work he stud-

ied wherever he went (witness the ** Album'* of

Villard de Honnecourt), whom he engaged and

supervised in his own enterprises, and to whom he

had to transmit an iconographic program which,

we remember, he could work out only in close

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cooperation with a scholastic adviser. But in doing

all this, he assimilated and conveyed rather than

applied the substance of contemporary thought.

What he vv^ho
**
devised the form of the building

w^hile not himself manipulating its matter' '^° could

and did apply, directly and qua architect, was

rather that peculiar method of procedure which

must have been the first thing to impress itself upon

the mind of the layman whenever it came in touch

with that of the schoolman.

This method of procedure follows, as every

modus operandi does, from a modus essendi;^^ it fol-

lows from the very raison d^etre of Early and High

Scholasticism, which is to establish the unity of

truth. The men of the twelfth and thirteenth cen-

turies attempted a task not yet clearly envisaged by

their forerunners and ruefully to be abandoned by

their successors, the mystics and the nominalists:

the task of writing a permanent peace treaty be-

28
 And Scholasticism
*
tween faith and reason. 'Sacred doctrine/' says

Thomas Aquinas, ** makes use of human reason, not

to prove faith but to make clear (manijestare) what-
'
ever else is set forth in this doctrine. '
^^
This means

that human reason can never hope to furnish direct

proof of such articles of faith as the tri-personal

structure of the Trinity, the Incarnation, the tem-

porality of Creation, etc.; but that it can, and

does, elucidate or clarify these articles.

First, human reason can furnish direct and com-

plete proof for whatever can be deduced from
principles other than revelation, that is, for all

ethical, physical, and metaphysical tenets including

the very praeambula Jidei, such as the existence

(though not the essence) of God, which can be

proved by an argument from effect to cause. '^ Sec-

ond, it can elucidate the content of revelation it-

self: by argument, though merely negatively, it can

refute all rational objections against the Articles of

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Faith —objections that must of necessity be either

false or inconclusive;^'^ and positively, though not

by argument, it can supply similitudines w^hich

**manifest" the mysteries by way of analogy, as

when the relation between the Three Persons of

the Trinity is Hkened to that between being, knowl-

edge and love in our own mind, ^^ or divine creation
^^
to the work of the human artist.

Manifestatio, then, elucidation or clarification, is

what I would call the first controlling principle of

Early and High Scholasticism. ^^ But in order to put

this principle into operation on the highest possible

plane —elucidation of faith by reason — it had to be

applied to reason itself: if faith had to be **mani-

fested" through a system of thought complete and

self-sufficient within its own limits yet setting itself

apart from the realm of revelation, it became neces-

sary to ''manifest" the completeness, self-suflfi-

30
 —

And Scholasticism

ciency, and limitedness of the system of thought.

And this could be done only by a scheme of literary

presentation that would elucidate the very proc-

esses of reasoning to the reader's imagination just

as reasoning was supposed to elucidate the very

nature of faith to his intellect. Hence the much
derided schematism or formalism of Scholastic

writing which reached its climax in the classic

Summa^^ with its three requirements of (i) totality

(sufficient enumeration), (2) arrangement accord-

ing to a system of homologous parts and parts of

parts (sufficient articulation), and (3) distinctness

and deductive cogency (sufficient interrelation)

all this enhanced by the literary equivalent of

Thomas Aquinas 's similitudines : suggestive termi-

nology, parallelismus membrorum, and rhyme. A well-

knowTi instance of the two latter devices —both

artistic as well as mnemonic — is St. Bonaventure's

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succinct defense of religious images which he de-

clares admissible * ^propter simplicium ruditatem, propter

^^
affectuum tarditatem, propter memoriae Jabilitatem,^ ^

We take it for granted that major works of schol-

arship, especially systems of philosophy and doc-
toral theses, are organized according to a scheme
of division and subdivision, condensable into a

table of contents or synopsis, where all parts de-

noted by numbers or letters of the same class are

on the same logical level ; so that the same relation

of subordination obtains between, say, sub-section

(a), section (i), chapter (I) and book (A) as does

between, say, sub-section (b), section (^), chapter

(IV) and book (C). However, this kind of system-

atic articulation was quite unknown until the

advent of Scholasticism.^® Classical writings (except

perhaps for those that consisted of denumerable

items such as collections of short poems or treatises

on mathematics) were merely divided into 'books. *

32
 And Scholasticism

When we wish to give what we, unsuspecting heirs

to Scholasticism, call an exact quotation, we must

either refer to the pages of a printed edition con-

ventionally accepted as authoritative (as we do with

Plato and Aristotle), or to a scheme introduced by
some humanist of the Renaissance as when we quote
a Vitruvius passage as "VII, i, 3.'*

It was, it seems, not until the earlier part of the

Middle Ages that "books" were divided into num-

bered "chapters' ' the sequence of which did not,

however, imply or reflect a system of logical subor-

dination; and it was not until the thirteenth cen-

tury that the great treatises were organized accord-

ing to an overall plan secundum ordinem disciphnae^^

so that the reader is led, step by step, from one

proposition to the other and is always kept in-

formed as to the progress of this process. The whole

is divided into partes which — like the Second Part

of Thomas Aquinas 's Summa Theologiae —could be

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divided into smaller partes ; the partes into membra,

quaestiones or distinctiones, and these into articuli,'^'^

Within the articuli, the discussion proceeds accord-

ing to a dialectical scheme involving further subdi-

vision, and almost every concept is split up into

two or more meanings (intendi potest dupliciter,

tripliciter, etc.) according to its varying relation to

others. On the other hand, a number of membra,

quaestiones, or distinctiones are often tied together

into a group. The first of the three partes that con-

stitute Thomas Aquinas 's Summa Theologiae, a

veritable orgy both of logic and Trinitarian sym-

bolism, is an excellent case in point. ^^

All this does not mean, of course, that the Scho-

lastics thought in more orderly and logical fashion

than Plato and Aristotle; but it does mean that

they, in contrast to Plato and Aristotle, felt com-

pelled to make the orderliness and logic of their

thought palpably explicit — that the principle of

34
 And Scholasticism

manifestatio which determined the direction and

scope of their thinking also controlled its exposition

and subjected this exposition to what may be

termed the postulate of clarification for
clarification's sake.

IV

Within Scholasticism itself this principle re-

sulted not only in the explicit unfolding of what,

though necessary, might have been allowed to re-

main implicit, but also, occasionally, in the intro-

duction of what was not necessary at all, or in the

neglect of a natural order of presentation in favor of

an artificial symmetry. In the very Prologue of the

Summa Theologiae, Thomas Aquinas complains, with

an eye on his forerunners, of **the multiplication of

useless questions, articles, and arguments'' and of a

tendency to present the subject **not according to

the order of the discipline itself but rather accord-

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ing to the requirements of literary exposition.*'

However, the passion for ** clarification*' imparted

itself
—quite naturally in view of the educational

monopoly of Scholasticism — to virtually every

mind engaged in cultural pursuits; it grew into a

**mental habit."

Whether we read a treatise on medicine, a hand-

book of classical mythology such as Ridewall's

Fulgentius MetaforaliSy a political propaganda sheet,

the eulogy of a ruler, or a biography of Ovid,*-* we

always find the same obsession with systematic divi-

sion and subdivision, methodical demonstration,

terminology, parallelismus membrorum, and rhyme.

Dante's Divina Commedia is Scholastic, not only in

much of its content but also in its deliberately

Trinitarian form.^^ In the Vita Nuova the poet him-

self goes out of his way to analyze the tenor of each

sonnet and canzone by ** parts" and ** parts of parts"

in perfectly Scholastic fashion, whereas Petrarch,

36
 And Scholasticism

half a century later, was to conceive of the struc-

ture of his songs in terms of euphony rather than

logic. **I thought of changing the order of the four

stanzas so that the first quatrain and the first terzina

would have come second and vice versa/' he re-

marks of one sonnet, **but I gave it up because then

the fuller sound would have been in the middle and
the hollo wer at the beginning and the end/'^^

What applies to prose and poetry applies no less

emphatically to the arts. Modem Gestalt psychol-

ogy, in contrast to the doctrine of the nineteenth

century and very much in harmony with that of the

thirteenth, ** refuses to reserve the capacity of syn-

thesis to the higher faculties of the human mind*'

and stresses '*the formative powers of the sensory
processes.'' Perception itself is now credited —and
I quote —with a kind of ** intelligence" that *' or-

ganizes the sensory material under the pattern of

simple, *good' Gestalten" in an ''effort of the org an-

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ism to assimilate stimuli to its own organization^^ ;^^ all

of which is the modem way of expressing precisely

what Thomas Aquinas meant when he wrote: **the

senses delight in things duly proportioned as in

something akin to them; for, the sense, too, is a kind of

reason as is every cognitive power^^ (^*sensus delectantur

in rebus debite proportionatis sicut in sibi similibus;

nam et sensus ratio quaedam est, et omnis virtus cogno-

scitiva'').^^

Small wonder, then, that a mentality which

deemed it necessary to make faith **clearer'' by an

appeal to reason and to make reason ** clearer'* by

an appeal to imagination, also felt bound to make

imagination ** clearer" by an appeal to the senses.

Indirectly, this preoccupation affected even philo-

sophical and theological literature in that the intel-

lectual articulation of the subject matter implies

the acoustic articulation of speech by recurrent

phrases, and the visual articulation of the written

38
 And Scholasticism

page by rubrics, numbers, and paragraphs. Directly,

it affected all the arts. As music became articulated

through an exact and systematic division of time

(it was the Paris school of the thirteenth century

that introduced the mensural notation still in use

and still referred to, in England at least, by the

* *
original terms of 'breve," **semibreve,*' 'min-

im,*' etc.), so did the visual arts become articu-

lated through an exact and systematic division of

*
space, resulting in a 'clarification for clarification's

sake'* of narrative contexts in the representational

arts, and of functional contexts in architecture.

In the field of the representational arts this might

be demonstrated by an analysis of almost any single

figure; but it is still more evident in the arrange-

ment of ensembles. Barring such accidents as hap-

pened at Magdeburg or Bamberg, the composition

of a High Gothic portal, for example, tends to be

subjected to a strict and fairly standardized scheme

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 Gothic Architecture

which, in imposing order upon the formal arrange-

ment, simultaneously clarifies the narrative con-

tent. Suffice it to compare the beautiful but as yet

not '* clarified'' Last Judgement portal of Autun

(fig. 2) with those of Paris or Amiens (fig. 3) where
— in spite of an even greater wealth of motifs —con-
summate clarity prevails. The tympanum is sharply

divided into three registers (a device unknown in

Romanesque save only such well-motivated excep-

tions as St.-Ursin-de-Bourges and Pompierre), the

Deesis being separated from the Damned and the

Elect, and these again from the Resurrected. The

Apostles, precariously included in the tympanum
at Autun, are placed in the embrasures where they

surmount the twelve Virtues and their counter-

parts (developed from the customary heptad by a

Scholastically correct subdivision of Justice) in

such a manner that Fortitude corresponds to St.

Peter, the **rock,'' and Charity to St. Paul, the

40
 And Scholasticism

author of / Corinthians, 1 3 ; and the Wise and Fool-

ish Virgins, antetypes of the Elect and the Damned,
have been added in the doorposts by way of a mar-

ginal gloss.

In painting, we can observe the process of clarifi-

cation in vitro, so to speak. We can compare, by an

extraordinary chance, a series of miniatures of

about 12^0 with their direct models, produced in

the latter half of the eleventh century probably

after 1079 and certainly before 1096 (fig. 4-7).^^

The two best known (fig. 6 and 7) represent King

Philip I conferring privileges and donations, among

them the church of St. -Samson, upon the Priory of

St. -Martin-des- Champs. But where the Early Ro-

manesque prototype, an unframed pen drawing,

shows a jumble of figures, buildings, and inscrip-

tions, the High Gothic copy is a carefully organ-

ized picture. It pulls the whole together by a frame

(adding, in a new feeling for realism and communal

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Gothic Architecture

dignity, a consecration ceremony at the bottom).

Neatly segregating the different elements, it divides

the area within the frame into four sharply delim-

ited fields which correspond to the categories of

the King, the Ecclesiastical Structures, the Episco-

pate, and the Secular Nobility. The two buildings

St. -Martin itself and St. -Samson — ^are not only

brought up to the same level but also represented

in pure side elevation instead of being shown in

mixed projection. The fact that the dignitaries,

formerly unattended and uniformly frontalized, are

accompanied by some minor personages and have

acquired the faculties of movement and intercom-
munication enhances rather than weakens their

individual significance; and the only ecclesiastic

who, for good reasons, has found his place among

the counts and princes. Archdeacon Drogo of
Paris, is clearly set off against them by his chasuble

and mitre.

42
 And Scholasticism

It was, however, in architecture that the habit of

clarification achieved its greatest triumphs. As

High Scholasticism was governed by the principle
of maniJestatiOy so was High Gothic architecture

dominated — ^as already observed by Suger — ^by

what may be called the ' *

principle of transparency. '
*

Pre-Scholasticism had insulated faith from reason

by an impervious barrier much as a Romanesque

structure (fig. 8) conveys the impression of a space

determinate and impenetrable, whether we find

ourselves inside or outside the edifice. Mysticism

was to drowm reason in faith, and nominalism was

to completely disconnect one from the other; and

both these attitudes may be said to find expression

in the Late Gothic hall church. Its bamlike shell

encloses an often wildly pictorial and always ap-

parently boundless interior (fig. 9) and thus creates

a space determinate and impenetrable from without

but indeterminate and penetrable from within.

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High Scholastic philosophy, however, severely

limited the sanctuary of faith from the sphere of

rational know^ledge yet insisted that the content of

this sanctuary remain clearly discernible. And so

did High Gothic architecture delimit interior vol-

ume from exterior space yet insist that it project

itself, as it w^ere, through the encompassing struc-

ture (fig. ig and 1 6); so that, for example, the

cross section of the nave can be read off from the

facade (fig. 34).

Like the High Scholastic Summay the High Gothic

cathedral aimed, first of all, at *' totality'* and there-

fore tended to approximate, by synthesis as vv^ell as

elimination, one perfect and final solution; we may

therefore speak of the High Gothic plan or the High

Gothic system with much more confidence than

would be possible in any other period. In its im-

agery, the High Gothic cathedral sought to embody

the whole of Christian knowledge, theological,

44
 And Scholasticism

moral, natural, and historical, with everything in

its place and that which no longer found its place,

suppressed. In structural design, it similarly sought

to synthesize all major motifs handed down by

separate channels and finally achieved an unparal-

leled balance between the basilica and the central

plan type, suppressing all elements that might

endanger this balance, such as the crypt, the galler-

ies, and towers other than the two in front.

The second requirement of Scholastic writing,

*
'arrangement according to a system of homologous

parts and parts of parts,'* is most graphically ex-

pressed in the uniform division and subdivision

of the whole structure. Instead of the Romanesque

variety of western and eastern vaulting forms, often

appearing in one and the same building (groin

vaults, rib vaults, barrels, domes, and half-domes),

we have the newly developed rib vault exclusively

so that the vaults of even the apse, the chapels and

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the ambulatory no longer differ in kind from those

of the nave and transept (fig. lo and ii). Since

Amiens, rounded surfaces were entirely eliminated,

except, of course, for the webbing of the vaults.

Instead of the contrast that normally existed be-

tween tripartite naves and undivided transepts (or

quinquepartite naves and tripartite transepts) we

have tripartition in both cases ; and instead of the

disparity (either in size, or in the type of covering,

or in both) between the bays of the high nave and

*
those of the side aisles, we have the 'uniform

travee,'^ in which one rib-vaulted central bay con-

nects with one rib-vaulted aisle bay on either side.

The whole is thus composed of smallest units —one

might almost speak of articuli —which are homolo-
gous in that they are all triangular in groundplan

and in that each of these triangles shares its sides

with its neighbors.

46
 And Scholasticism

As a result of this homology we perceive what

corresponds to the hierarchy of '* logical levels" in

a well-organized Scholastic treatise. Dividing the

entire structure, as was customary in the period

itself, into three main parts, the nave, the transept,

and the chevet (which in turn comprises the fore-

choir and the choir proper), and distinguishing,

within these parts, between high nave and side-

aisles, on the one hand, and between apse, ambu-

latory, and hemicycle of chapels, on the other, we
can observe analogous relations to obtain: first, be-

tween each central bay, the whole of the central

nave, and the entire nave, transept or fore-choir,

respectively; second, between each side aisle bay,

the v/hole of each side aisle, and the entire nave,

transept or fore-choir, respectively; third, be-

tween each sector of the apse, the whole apse,

and the entire choir; fourth, between each section

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of the ambulatory, the whole ambulatory and the

entire choir; and fifth, between each chapel, the

whole hemicycle of chapels, and the entire choir.
It is not possible here —nor is it necessary — to

describe how this principle of progressive divisibil-

ity (or, to look at it the other way, multiplicability)

increasingly affected the entire edifice down to the

smallest detail. At the height of the development,

supports were divided and subdivided into main

piers, major shafts, minor shafts, and still minor

shafts; the tracery of windows, triforia, and blind

arcades into primary, secondary, and tertiary mul-

lions and profiles; ribs and arches into a series of

moldings (fig. 22). It may be mentioned, however,

that the very principle of homology that controls

the whole process implies and accounts for the rela-

tive uniformity which distinguishes the High

Gothic vocabulary from the Romanesque. All parts

that are on the same ^'logical level" —and this is

48
 And Scholasticism

especially noticeable in those decorative and repre-

sentational features which, in architecture, corre-

spond to Thomas Aquinas 's similitudines —came to

be conceived of as members of one class, so that the

enormous variety in, for instance, the shape of

canopies, the decoration of socles and archevaults,

and, above all, the form of piers and capitals tended

to be suppressed in favor of standard types admit-

ting only of such variations as would occur in

nature among individuals of one species. Even in

the world of fashion the thirteenth century is dis-

tinguished by a reasonableness and uniformity

(even as far as the difference between masculine

and feminine costumes is concerned) which was

equally foreign to the preceding and to the follow-

ing period.

The theoretically illimited fractionization of the

edifice is limited by what corresponds to the third

requirement of Scholastic writing: '* distinctness

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and deductive cogency/' According to classic High

Gothic standards the individual elements, while

forming an indiscerptible whole, yet must pro-

claim their identity by remaining clearly separated

from each other —the shafts from the wall or the

core of the pier, the ribs from their neighbors, all

vertical members from their arches; and there

must be an unequivocal correlation between them.
We must be able to tell which element belongs to

which, from which results what might be called a

**postulate of mutual inferability' ' —^not in dimen-

sions, as in classical architecture, but in conforma-

tion. While Late Gothic permitted, even delighted

in, flowing transitions and interpenetrations, and

loved to defy the rule of correlation by, for in-

stance, over-membrification of the ceiling and

under-membrification of the supports (fig. 9), the

classic style demands that we be able to infer, not

only the interior from the exterior or the shape of

50
 And Scholasticism

the side aisles from that of the central nave but

also, say, the organization of the whole system

from the cross section of one pier.

The last-named instance is especially instructive.

In order to establish uniformity among all the sup-

ports, including those in the rond-point (and also,

perhaps, in deference to a latent classicizing im-

pulse), the builders of the most important struc-

tures after Senlis, Noyon, and Sens had abandoned

the compound pier and had sprung the nave ar-

cades from monocylindrical piers (fig. 1 8). 3° This,

of course, made it impossible to '* express," as it

were, the superstructure in the conformation of

the supports. In order to accomplish this and yet

preserve the now accepted form, there was in-

vented the pilier cantonne, the columnar pier with

four applied colonnettes (fig. 19-21). However,

while this type, adopted in Chartres, Reims, and

Amiens, 3» permitted the '^expression" of the

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transverse ribs of the nave and side aisles as w^ell

as the longitudinal arches of the nave arcades, it

did not permit the '* expression'* of the diagonals

(fig. _^i). The final solution was found (in St.-

Denis) by the resumption of the compound pier,

reorganized, however, in such a way that it ''ex-

pressed" every feature of a High Gothic super-

structure (fig. 22). The inner profile of the nave

arches is taken up by a strong colonnette, their

outer profile by a slighter one, the transverse and

diagonal ribs of the nave by three tall shafts (the

central one stronger than the two others) to which

correspond three analogous colonnettes for the

transverse and diagonal ribs of the side-aisles ; and

even what remains of the nave wall —the only ele-

ment that stubbornly persisted in being ''walF'

*
is 'manifested'' in the rectangular, still "mural'*

core of the pier itself (fig. 52).^^

This is indeed "rationalism." It is not quite the

52
 And Scholasticism

rationalism conceived by Choisy and Viollet-le-

Duc,33 for the compound piers of St. -Denis have

no functional, let alone economic, advantages over

the piliers cantonnes of Reims or Amiens; but
neither is it — as Pol Abraham would have us be-

lieve
— **illusionism."34 From the point of view^ of

the modern archaeologist this famous quarrel be-

tween Pol Abraham and the functionalists can be

settled by the reasonable compromise proposed by

Marcel Aubert and Henri Focillon and, as a matter

of fact, already envisaged by Ernst Gall.^^

No doubt Pol Abraham is wrong in denying the

practical value of even such features as ribs and

flying buttresses. The skeleton of '* independently

constructed ribs" (arcus singulariter Koiuti),^^ much

heavier and more robust than their graceful profiles

lead us to believe (fig. 24), did have considerable

technical advantages in that it made it possible to

vault the webs in freehand (which saved much wood

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and labor for centering) and to reduce their thick-

ness ; for according to compHcated modem calcula-

tions, the simple result of which was so well known,

empirically, to the Gothic builders that they took

it for granted in their writings, ^7 an arch twice

as thick as another is, ceteris paribus, just twice as

strong; which means that ribs do reinforce the

vault. That Gothic vaults have been known to sur-

vive when the ribs were blasted away by artillery

fire in World War I does not prove that they would

have survived had they been deprived of their ribs

after seven weeks instead of after seven centuries

for ancient masonry will hold together by sheer

cohesion so that major portions even of the walls

may be seen hanging, as it were, in position after

the loss of their supports (fig. 2^).^^

Buttresses and flying buttresses do counteract

the deformative forces which threaten the stability

of every vault. ^9 And that the Gothic masters

54
 And Scholasticism

excepting only those headstrong Milanese ignora-

muses who blandly contended that '*no thrust upon

the buttresses is exerted by vaults with pointed

arches" —were fully aware of this is documented

by several texts and attested to by their very trade

expressions such as contrefort, bouterec (hence our

*
'buttress'*), arc-boutant, or the German strebe

(hence, interestingly enough, the Spanish estribo)^

all of which denote the function of a thrust or

counterthrust.-^^ The upper range of flying but-

tresses —subsequently added in Chartres but

planned from the outset in Reims and in most

major edifices after that —may well have been

intended to lend support to the steeper, heavier

roofs and, possibly, to resist the wind pressure

against them.^' Even tracery has a certain practical

value in that it facilitates the installation and aids

the preservation of glass.

On the other hand, it is equally true that the

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earliest genuine ribs appear in connection with

heavy groin vaults, w^here they could not have been

*
constructed 'independently'' and thus would
neither have saved centering nor would have had
much statical value afterwards (fig. 23);'*^^ it is also

true that the flying buttresses of Chartres, their

functional importance notwithstanding, appealed

to the aesthetic sense so much so that the master

of the beautiful Madonna in the north transept

of Reims Cathedral repeated them, en miniature,

in the Madonna's aedicule (fig. 26 and 27). The

admirable architect of St.-Ouen in Rouen, whose

design most closely approximates the modern

standards of statical efficiency, "^^^
rnanaged with-

out an upper range of flying buttresses. And on no

account could there have been any practical reason

for that elaboration of the buttressing system which

transforms it into a filigree of colonnettes, taber-

nacles, pinnacles, and tracery (fig. 29). The largest

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 And Scholasticism

of all stained glass windows, the west window of

Chartres, has survived seven centuries without any

tracery ; and that the blind tracery applied to solid

surfaces has no technical importance whatsoever

goes without saying.

However, this whole discussion is not to the

point. With reference to twelfth and thirteenth

century architecture, the alternative, ^*all is func-

tion — all is illusion," is as little valid as would be,

with reference to twelfth and thirteenth century

philosophy, the alternative '*all is search for truth

— all is intellectual gymnastics and oratory." The

ribs of Caen and Durham, not as yet singulahter

voluti, began by saying something before being able

to do it. The flying buttresses of Caen and Durham,

still hidden beneath the roofs of the side aisles

(fig. 28), began by doing something before being

permitted to say so. Ultimately, the flying but-

tress learned to talk, the rib learned to work, and

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both learned to proclaim what they were doing in

language more circumstantial, explicit, and ornate

than was necessary for mere efficiency; and this

applies also to the conformation of the piers and

the tracery which had been talking as well as work-

ing all the time.

We are faced neither with ''rationalism" in a

purely functionalistic sense nor with ''illusion"

in the sense of modem Vart pour Vart aesthetics.

We are faced with what may be termed a

*
'visual

logic" illustrative of Thomas Aquinas *s nam et

sensus ratio quaedam est, A man imbued with the

Scholastic habit would look upon the mode of
architectural presentation, just as he looked upon
the mode of literary presentation, from the point

of view of manifestatio. He would have taken it for

granted that the primary purpose of the many

elements that compose a cathedral was to ensure

stability, just as he took it for granted that the

58
 And Scholasticism

primary purpose of the many elements that con-

stitute a Summa was to ensure vaHdity.

But he would not have been satisfied had not the

membrification of the edifice permitted him to re-

experience the very processes of architectural

composition just as the membrification of the

Summa permitted him to re-experience the very

processes of cogitation. To him, the panoply of

shafts, ribs, buttresses, tracery, pinnacles, and

crockets was a self-analysis and self-explication of

architecture much as the customary apparatus of

parts, distinctions, questions, and articles was, to

him, a self-analysis and self-explication of reason.

Where the humanistic mind demanded a maximum

of **harmony'' (impeccable diction in writing,

impeccable proportion, so sorely missed in Gothic

structures by Vasari,^^ in architecture), the Scho-

lastic mind demanded a maximum of explicitness.

It accepted and insisted upon a gratuitous clarifica-

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tion of function through form just as it accepted

and insisted upon a gratuitous clarification of

thought through language.

To reach its classic phase the Gothic style needed

no more than a hundred years —from Suger's St.-

Denis to Pierre de Montereau's; and we should

expect to see this rapid and uniquely concentrated

development proceed with unparalleled consistency

and directness. Such, however, is not the case.

Consistent the development is, but it is not direct.

On the contrary, when observing the evolution

from the beginning to the

*
'final solutions," we
receive the impression that it went on almost after
'
the fashion of a 'jumping procession,'' taking two

steps forward and then one backward, as though

the builders were deliberately placing obstacles in

their own way. And this can be observed not only

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 And Scholasticism

under such adverse financial or geographical condi-

tions as normally produce a retrogression by de-

fault, so to speak, but in monuments of the very

first rank.

The **finar' solution of the general plan was

reached, we remember, in a basilica having a tri-

partite nave; a transept, likewise tripartite and

distinctly projecting from the nave but merging,

as it were, into the quinquepartite fore-choir; a

concentric chevet with ambulatory and radiating

chapels ; and only two towers in front (fig. 1 1 and

1 6). At first glance, the natural thing would have

been a rectilinear development starting from St.-

Germer and St.-Lucien-de-Beauvais which antici-

pate nearly all these features in the early twelfth

century. Instead, we find a dramatic struggle be-

tween two contrasting solutions each of which

seems to lead away from the ultimate result.

Suger's St.-Denis and Sens Cathedral (fig. 12) pro-

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vided a strictly longitudinal model, with only two

towers in front and the transept either stunted or

entirely omitted — a plan adopted in Notre-Dame

of Paris and Mantes, and still retained in the High

Gothic Cathedral of Bourges.^^ As though in protest

against this, the masters of Laon (fig. 1 3 and 14)

possibly swayed by the unique location of their
cathedral on the crest of a hill —reverted to the

Germanic idea of a multinomial group with a pro-

jecting, tripartite transept and many towers (as

exemplified by the Cathedral of Tournai), and it

took the succeeding generations two more cathe-

drals to get rid of the extra towers surmounting

the transept and the crossing. Chartres was planned

with no less than nine towers; Reims, like Laon

itself, with seven (fig. ig); and it was not until

Amiens (fig. 16) that the disposition with only two

front towers was reinstated.
Similarly, the '^final" solution of the nave com-

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 And Scholasticism

position (fig. 19-22) implied, in plan, a succession

of uniform, oblong, quadrupartite vaults and uni-

form, articulated piers; and, in elevation, a triadic

sequence of arcades, triforium, and clerestory.

Again it would seem that this solution might have

been reached by going ahead, straightforwardly,

from such early twelfth-century prototypes as St.-

Etienne-de-Beauvais or Lessay in Normandy (fig.

17). Instead, all major structures prior to Soissons

and Chartres sport sixpartite vaults over mono-

cylindrical piers (fig. 18) or even revert to the

antiquated ** alternating system.'' Their elevation

shows galleries which, in the most important build-

ings later than Noyon, are combined with a tri-

forium (or, as in Notre-Dame-de-Paris, with the

equivalent thereof) into a four-story arrangement

(fig. i8).4^

In retrospect, it is easy to see that what seems to

be an arbitrary deviation from the direct road is in

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reality an indispensable prerequisite of the ** final*'

solution. Had it not been for the adoption of the

many- towered group in Laon, no balance would

have been achieved between the longitudinal and

the centralizing tendencies, much less a unification

of a fully developed chevet with an equally fully

developed tripartite transept. Had it not been for

the adoption of sixpartite vaults and a four-story

elevation, it would not have been possible to recon-

cile the ideal of a uniform progression from west to

east with the ideals of transparency and verticalism.

In both cases the ** final'* solutions were arrived at

by the acceptance and ultimate reconcilia-

tion OF CONTRADICTORY POSSIBILITIES. ^^ Here we

come upon the second controlling principle of

Scholasticism. And if the first—manifestatio —

helped us to understand how classic High Gothic

looks, this second concordantia —may help us to

understand how classic High Gothic came about.

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 And Scholasticism

All that mediaeval man could know about divine

revelation, and much of what he held to be true in

other respects, was transmitted by the authorities

(auctoritates): primarily, by the canonical books of

the Bible which furnished arguments **
intrinsic

and irrefutable'* (proprie et ex necessitate); second-

arily, by the teachings of the Fathers of the Church,

*
which furnished arguments 'intrinsic" though
merely ''probable," and of the "philosophers"
which furnished arguments "not intrinsic" (ex-

tranea) and merely probable for this very reason.*^

Now, it could not escape notice that these authori-

ties, even passages of Scripture itself, often con-

flicted with one another. There was no other way

out than to accept them just the same and to inter-

pret and reinterpret them over and over again until

they could be reconciled. This had been done by

theologians from the earliest days. But the problem

was not posed as a matter of principle until Abe-

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lard wrote his famous Sic et Non, wherein he

showed the authorities, including Scripture, disa-

greeing on I ^8 important points —from the initial

problem whether or not faith ought to seek support

in human reason down to such special questions as

the permissibility of suicide (iss) or concubinage

(124). Such a systematic collection and confronta-

tion of conflicting authorities had long been a prac-

tice of the canonists ; but law, though God-given,

was, after all, man-made. Abelard showed himself

very conscious of his boldness in exposing the

^'differences or even contradictions" (ab invicem

diversa, verum etiam invicem adversa) within the very

sources of revelation when he wrote that this

**
would stimulate the reader all the more vigor-

ously to inquire into the truth the more the author-

ity of Scripture is extolled. '''^^

After having laid down, in his splendid introduc-

tion, the basic principles of textual criticism (in-

66
 And Scholasticism

eluding the possibility of clerical error in even a

Gospel, such as the ascription of a prophesy of

Zacharias to Jeremias in Matthew, xxvii, 9), Abelard

mischievously refrained from proposing solutions.

But it was inevitable that such solutions should be

w^orked out, and this procedure became a more and

more important part, perhaps the most important

part, of the Scholastic method. Roger Bacon,
shrew^dly observing the diverse origins of this Scho-

lastic method, reduced it to three components:

*
division into many parts as do the dialecticians;

rhythmical consonances as do the grammarians;

and forced harmonizations (concordiae violentes) as

''^°
used by the jurists.

It was this technique of reconciling the seem-

ingly irreconcilable, perfected into a fine art through

the assimilation of Aristotelian logic, that deter-

mined the form of academic instruction, the ritual

of the public disputationes de quoUhet already men-

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tioned, and, above all, the process of argumenta-

tion in the Scholastic writings themselves. Every

topic (e.g., the content of every aniculus in the

Summa Theologiae) had to be formulated as a quaestio

the discussion of w^hich begins with the alignment

of one set of authorities (videtur quod . . .) against

the other (sed contra . . .), proceeds to the solution

(respondeo dicendum , . .), and is followed by an

individual critique of the arguments rejected (ad

primumy ad secundum, etc.) — rejected, that is, only

insofar as the interpretation, not the validity, of

the authorities is concerned.

Needless to say, this principle was bound to form

a mental habit no less decisive and all-embracing

than that of unconditional clarification. Combative

though they were in dealing with each other, the

Scholastics of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries

were unanimous in accepting the authorities and

prided themselves on their skill in understanding

68
 And Scholasticism

and exploiting them rather than on the originaHty

of their own thought. One feels the breath of a new

era when WilHam of Ockham, whose nominahsm
was to cut the ties between reason and faith and
who could say: **What Aristotle thought about

this, I don't care,''^^ goes out of his way to deny

the influence of his most important forerunner,

Peter Aureolus.^^

An attitude similar to that of High Scholasticism

must be presupposed in the builders of the High

Gothic cathedrals. For these architects the great

structures of the past had an auctoritas quite similar

to that which the Fathers had for the schoolmen.

Of two apparently contradictory motifs, both of

them sanctioned by authority, one could not simply

be rejected in favor of the other. They had to be

worked through to the limit and they had to be

reconciled in the end; much as a saying of St. Au-

gustine had ultimately to be reconciled with one of

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St. Ambrose. And this, I believe, accounts to some

extent for the apparently erratic yet stubbornly

consistent evolution of Early and High Gothic archi-

tecture ; it, too, proceeded according to the scheme

videtur quod — sed contra — respondeo dicendum,

I should like to illustrate this, most cursorily, by

three characteristic Gothic *

^problems*' — or, as

w^e might say, quaestiones: the rose window^ in the

west facade, the organization of the wall beneath

the clerestory, and the conformation of the nave

piers.

So far as we know, west facades were pierced by

normal windows, and not by roses, until Suger

perhaps impressed by the magnificent specimen in

the north transept of St.-Etienne in Beauvais

chose to adopt the motif for the west facade of St.-

Denis, superimposing a magnificent No/i upon the

Sic of the big window beneath it (fig. 30). The fur-

ther development of this innovation was fraught

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with great difficulties. ^3 If the diameter of the rose

remained comparatively small or was even reduced

(as in Senlis), an awkward and **un-Gothic'* space

of wall was left on either side as well as underneath.

If the rose was enlarged to approximately the full

width of the nave, it tended to conflict with the

nave vaults when seen from within and required on

the exterior as wide an interval as possible between

the buttresses of the facade, thus uncomfortably

diminishing the space available for side portals.

Apart from this, the very concept of an isolated,

circular unit conflicted with the ideals of Gothic

taste in general, and with the ideal of a Gothic

facade —adequate representation of the interior

in particular.

Small wonder that Normandy and —with a very

few exceptions —England plainly rejected the

whole idea and simply enlarged the traditional win-

dow until it filled the available space (while Italy,

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characteristically, greeted the rose with enthusiasm

because of its aufond anti-Gothic character). ^"^ The

architects of the Royal Domain and Champagne,
however, felt bound to accept a motif sanctioned

by the authority of St. -Denis, and it is almost amus-

ing to observe their perplexities.

The architect of Notre-Dame (fig. 3 1

) was lucky
in that he had a quinquepartite nave. Courageously

though not quite honestly ignoring this fact, he

built a tripartite facade the lateral sections of which

were so wide in comparison to the middle that all

problems were easily solved. The master of Mantes,

however, had to make the distance between the

buttresses considerably smaller than the width of

the nave (as small, in fact, as was technically possi-

ble); and even then the space for the side portals

was far from ample. The master of Laon, who

wanted both a full-sized rose and generous side

portals, resorted to a trick; he broke the buttresses

72
 And Scholasticism

so that their lower sections, framing the central

portal, are closer together than the upper ones that

frame the rose; and then he concealed the break

by the enormous fig-leaf of his porch (fig. 32). The

masters of Amiens, finally, with their inordinately
slender nave, needed two galleries (one with kings,
the other without) to fill the space between the

rose and the portals (fig. 33).

It was not until 1240-^0 that the school of

Reims, culminating in St.-Nicaise, discovered the

**finar' solution (fig. 34 and 3^): the rose was

inscribed within the pointed arch of a huge window,

thereby becoming elastic, as it were. It could be

lowered so as not to conflict with the vaults; the

space beneath it could be filled with mullions and

glass. The whole arrangement mirrored the cross

section of the nave, and yet the window remained

a window and the rose a rose. For the window-and-

rose combination of St.-Nicaise is not, as might be

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thought, a simple enlargement of a bipartite bar-

tracery window as seen, for the first time, in Reims

Cathedral (fig. 36). In such a window the circular

element surmounting the openings is not, as is the

rose, a centrifugal but a centripetal form: not a

wheel, with spokes radiating from a hub, but a

roundel with cusps converging from a rim. Hugues

Libergier could never have arrived at his solution

by merely magnifying a motif already extant ; his is

a genuine reconciliation of a videtur quod with a sed

contra, ^^

Concerning the problem of organizing the wall

beneath the clerestory (unless this wall was elimin-
ated by genuine, independently lighted galleries)

the Romanesque style had offered, roughly speak-

ing, two contrasting solutions, one emphasizing the

two-dimensional surface and horizontal continuity,

the other depth and vertical articulation. On the

one hand, the wall could be enlivened by a contin-

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 And Scholasticism

uous band of small, evenly spaced wall arches as in

Ste.-Trinite in Caen (fig. 37), St.-Martin-de-Bos-

cherville, Le Mans, and the churches of the Cluny-

Autun type ; on the other, by a sequence of major
arches (mostly two to each bay and subdivided by

colonnettes so as to constitute dead windows, so to

speak) which open onto the roof space above the

side aisles as in Mont-St. -Michel, the narthex of

Cluny, Sens (fig. 38), etc.

The genuine triforium, introduced in Noyon

about 1 170 (fig. 39), is a first synthesis of these two

types: it combines horizontal continuity with an
emphasis on shadowy depth. But vertical articulation

within the bay was entirely suppressed, and this

was bound to be felt all the more keenly as the

clerestory windows had begun to be divided into

two lights. Thus in the choir of St.-Remi at Reims

and in Notre-Dame-en-Vaux at Chalons-sur-Mame

(fig. 40), a shaft or shafts (two in St.-Remi, one in

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Chalons) were carried from the lower ledge of the

triforium right up into the clerestory, where they

serve as frames for the windows, trisecting or bi-

secting the triforium itself. Such a solution was,

however, rejected in Laon (fig. i8) as well as,

about the turn of the century, in Chartres (fig. 41)

and Soissons. In these first High Gothic churches,
where galleries were dropped for good and the two
lights of the windows were unified into one bi-

partite plate-tracery window, the triforium still

or, rather, again — consists of perfectly equal inter-

stices separated by perfectly equal colonnettes;

horizontal continuity rules supreme, all the more

so because the string courses overlap the wall

shafts.

A reaction against this unmitigated horizontalism

set in at Reims where the vertical axis of the tri-

forium bays was emphasized by thickening the cen-

tral colonnettes so that they might correspond to

76
 And Scholasticism

the mullions above them (fig. 42). This was done

so discreetly that the modem visitor is Hkely to
overlook it. But the master's colleagues did per-

ceive the imiovation and thought it important: in

his sketch of the inner elevation of Reims Cathedral

Villard de Honnecourt so enormously exaggerated
the slightly stouter proportions of the central col-

onnette that no one can help noticing it (fig. 43).^^

What had been a mere hint in Reims became an

explicit and emphatic statement in Amiens (fig.

44). Here the triforium bay was actually bisected,

as had been the case in Chalons-sur-Mame and, at

an earlier stage of evolution, in Sens: it was cut

apart into two separate units, with the central col-

onnette transformed into a clustered pier the main

shaft of which connects with the central mullion

of the window.

However, in doing this, the masters of Amiens

almost negated the whole idea of the triforium,

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dividing as they did each bay into two **bHnd win-

dows'' and transforming the even sequence of col-

onnettes into an alternation of members different

in kind, viz., colonnettes and clustered piers. As

though to counteract this overemphasis on vertical

articulation, they accelerated the rhythm of the

triforium and made it independent of that of the

clerestorv. Each of the two ** blind windows'' that

constitute a triforium bay is divided into three sec-

tions, whereas each of the two lights that constitute

a clerestory window is divided into two. The

horizontal element is further stressed by the elab-

oration of the lower string course into a band of

floral ornament.

It was left to Pierre de Montereau to say the final

respondeo dicendum : as in Soissons and Chartres, the

triforium of St. -Denis (fig. 45^) is a continuous

sequence of four equal openings, separated by mem-

bers of the same species. However —and this is

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 And Scholasticism

where Amiens comes in —all of these members are

now clustered piers instead of colonnettes, the one

in the center somewhat stronger than the others;

and all of them are carried up into the quadrupar-

tite window, the central pier by means of three

shafts connecting with the primary mullion, the

others by means of one shaft connecting with the

secondaries. Pierre de Montereau*s triforium is not

only the first to be glazed but also the first to effect

a perfect reconciliation of the Sic of Chartres and

Soissons (or, if you like, Ste.-Trinite-de-Caen and

Autun) with the Non of Amiens (or, if you like,

Chalons-sur-Mame and Sens). Now, finally, the big

wall shafts could be carried over the string courses

without fear of disrupting the horizontal continuity

of the triforium ; and this brings us to the last of our

''problems," the conformation of the nave piers.

The earliest genuine piliers cantonnes occur, so

far as I know, in Chartres Cathedral (begun 1

194)

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where they are, however, not as yet composed of

homogeneous elements — cyHndrical
a core and

cylindrical colonnettes—but show, in alternation,

a combination of a cylindrical core with octagonal

colonnettes and a combination of cylindrical colon-

nettes with an octagonal core. This latter motif

would seem to indicate that the master of Chartres

was familiar with a movement, apparently originat-

ing in the borderline district between France and

the Netherlands, which has left its most important

traces in the choir of Canterbury Cathedral. Here
William of Sens, magister operis from 1
1 74 to 1
1 78,

had almost playfully indulged in inventing all kinds

of variations on a modish theme enthusiastically

received in England but hardly ever utilized in

France —the theme of piers in which a core of

light-colored masonry is picturesquely contrasted

with completely detached and monolithic shafts

fashioned of darkest marble. ^^ He had produced

80
 And Scholasticism

what may be called a sample card of fancy pier

types, and one of these consisted, like the alternate

supports at Chartres, of an octagonal core and

cylindrical shafts (fig. 46, third pier from left;

fig- ^4).

The master of Chartres adopted this idea but de-

veloped it in an altogether different spirit. He

retransformed the detached, monolithic shafts into

engaged colonnettes constructed of ordinary ma-

sonry ; he substituted in every second pair of piers

a cylindrical core for the octagonal one; and,

above all, he employed the pilier cantonne, not as an

interesting variant but as the basic element of the

whole system. And all the first master of Reims had

to do was to eliminate the charming but not quite

logical difference in shape between the colonnettes
and the core.
In this perfected form, the pilier cantonne is in it-

self a Sic et Non solution in that it shows colonnettes,

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originally applied only to angular elements (splay-

ings or piers), in combination with a cylindrical

nucleus. But as the early type of triforium tended

to suppress vertical articulation in favor of hori-

zontal continuity, so did the early type of pilier

cantonne tend to remain columnar rather than

**mural/' Like a column, it ended with a capital

whereas, in a compound pier, the colonnettes

facing the nave were carried through to the spring-

ings of the vaults. This created problems which

gave rise to a zigzag development similar to that

which could be observed in the treatment of the

triforium.

First, since Gothic capitals are proportioned to

the diameter rather than to the height of their

shirfts,^* there came about a combination of one big

capital (that of the nucleus) with four small ones

(those of the colonnettes) only half as high. Second,

82
 And Scholasticism

and more important, the three —or even — five wall

shafts rising into the vaults still started afresh above

the capitals as had been the case w^hen the piers

were monocylindrical, and it became imperative

to establish a visible connection betw^een at least

the central wall shaft and what I shall call for short

the **nave colonnette," viz., that colonnette of

the pier which faces the nave and not the side aisle

or the neighboring pier. The master of Chartres

sought to achieve this end by omitting the capital

of the **nave colonnette," which thus continues up

to the base of the central wall shaft (fig. 47 and

gg). Far from pursuing the same course, the mas-

ters of Reims reverted to the earlier form,^^ leaving

the **nave colonnette" in possession of its capital,

and concentrated instead on the other problem,

the inequality of the capitals' heights. They solved

it by providing each colonnette with two capitals,

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one superimposed upon the other, whose combined

heights equalled the height of the pier capital (fig.

48 and ^6).^°
Amiens, on the contrary, reverted to the Char-
tres type, taking, however, one step farther in

the same direction in that not only the capital of

the **nave colonnette'' but also the base of the

central wall shaft was eliminated, so that the **nave

colonnette'' continues into the central wall shaft

itself, not only into its base as in Chartres (fig. 49

and £y). The older piers of Beauvais are generally

similar to those of Amiens, but revert to the pre-

Amiens tradition in restoring the base to the central

wall shaft ; and this renewed interruption of ver-

tical coherence is further emphasized by decorative

foliage (fig. ^8).

Yet, when the choir of Beauvais was built, the

Gordian knot had already been cut by Pierre de

Montereau's bold revival of the compound pier

84
 And Scholasticism

which solved all difficulties in that the big pier

capital and the single *'nave colonnette'' no longer

existed (fig. ^o and ^9). The three tall shafts re-

quired by the main vaults could be run from the

floor bases to the springings without interruption,

cutting right through the capitals of the nave ar-

cades (fig. 22). However, Pierre de Montereau

endorsed the Non rather than reconciled it with

the Sic, Wisely subordinating the minor problem

of the pier to the major problem of the whole sys-

tem, he chose to sacrifice the columnar principle

*
rather than to renounce that adequate 'representa-

tion' '
of the nave wall by the core of the pier which

has been mentioned (fig. ^2). In this case, the

respondeo dicendum was to be spoken by the French-

trained master of Cologne who combined the cylin-

drical, four-shafted pilier cantonne of Amiens with

the tall, continuous shafts and subsidiary colon-

nettes of Pierre de Montereau *s compound pier.^^

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But he sacrificed thereby the logical correspond-

ence between the nave wall and the supports. Seen

in a diagram, the ground plan of the nave wall

again arbitrarily intersects that of the core of the

pier instead of coinciding with it (fig. ^3).

The gentle reader may feel about all this as Dr.

Watson felt about the phylogenetic theories of

Sherlock Holmes: **It is surely rather fanciful."

And he may object that the development here

sketched amounts to nothing but a natural evolu-

tion after the Hegelian scheme of '* thesis, antith-

esis, and synthesis'' — a scheme that might fit other

processes (for instance, the development of Quat-

trocento painting in Florence or even that of indi-

vidual artists) just as well as it does the progress

from Early to High Gothic in the heart of France.

However, what distinguishes the development of

French Gothic architecture from comparable phe-

nomena is, first, its extraordinary consistency;

86
 And Scholasticism

second, the fact that the principle, videtur quod, sed

contra, respondeo dicenduniy seems to have been appHed

with perfect consciousness.

There is one scrap of evidence — w^ell knovm, to

be sure, but not as yet considered in this particular

light — ^w^hich shoves that at least some of the French

thirteenth-century architects did think and act in

strictly Scholastic terms. In Villard de Honne-

court's ** Album'' there is to be found the ground-

plan of an **idear' chevet which he and another

master, Pierre de Corbie, had devised, according

to the slightly later inscription, inter se disputando

(fig. 60).^^ Here, then, we have two High Gothic

architects discussing a quaestio, and a third one re-

ferring to this discussion by the specifically Scho-

lastic term disputare instead of coUoqui, deliberare,

or the like. And what is the result of this disputatio?

A chevet which combines, as it were, all possible

Sics with all possible Nons, It has a double ambu-

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latory combined with a continuous hemicycle of

fully developed chapels, all nearly equal in depth.

The groundplan of these chapels is alternately semi-

circular and — Cistercian fashion — square. And

while the square chapels are vaulted separately,

as was the usual thing, the semicircular ones are

vaulted under one keystone with the adjacent sec-

tors of the outer ambulatory as in Soissons and

its derivatives. ^3 Here Scholastic dialectics has

driven architectural thinking to a point where it

almost ceased to be architectural.

88
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1. To trace the development of this parallel in modem

literature would require a separate study ; suffice it to refer

to the beautiful pages in Charles R. Morey's Mediaeval Art,

New York, 1942, pp. 25^5-267.

2. Cf. W. Koehler, "Byzantine Art in the West," Dum-

barton Oaks Papers, I, 1941, pp. Sg {.

3. Cf. M. Dvorak, Idealismus und Naturalismus in der gotischen

Skulptur und Malerei, Munich, 1 9 1 8 (originally in Historische

Zeitschrift, 3rd ser., XXIIl), passim; E. Panofsky, Deutsche
Plastik des elften bis dreizehnten Jahrhunderts, Munich, 1924,
pp. 65 fif. We can easily see that the ecclesiastical authorities
found it hard to acquiesce in this new, Aristotelian point of
view. As late as 121^ the University of Paris enc^ orsed the
resolution of the Synod of Paris of i 2 1 o which had con-
demned Aristotle's Metaphysics and Naturalia (and even
abridgments thereof) together with such outright heretics
as David of Dinant and Amaury de Bene who taught the
unity of God with His creation. In 1231 Pope Gregory IX
tacitly admitted the Metaphysics but reiterated the prohibi-

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tion of the Naturalia as long as they had not been ''censored

and expurgated of errors." He even set up a commission for
this purpose; but by this time the moment for effective
countermeasures had passed.

4. The word compendium (originally "a hoard," **a saving")

had come to mean *
'a shortcut' ' (compendia montis) and, still

more figuratively, a literary "abridgment" (compendium

docendi). In the resolutions of i2io and i2i^ mentioned in

note 3, the w^ord summa is still used in this sense: "Non

legantur libri Aristotelis de metaphysica et naturali historia,
nee summa de iisdem." According to general assumption the
first instance of a Summa Theologiae in the novv^ current sense

is that by Robert de Courzon of 1202 (not as yet published

in full). It is, however, probable that the Summae by
Prevostin and Stephen Langton (likewise active at Paris)
precede it by some ten or fifteen years; cf. E. Lesne,
Histoire de la propriete ecclesiastique en France, V (Les Ecoles

de la fn du VIW siecle a la Jin du XW) Lille, 1940, espe-

cially pp. 249 25^1, 676.

£. Cf. Robert Grosseteste, Roger Bacon, also William

Shyreswood.

6. For Ockham, cf. the recent book by R. Guelluy, Vhilo-

sophie et Theologie chez Guillaume d^ Ockham, Louvain, i947;

92
 Notes

for Nicholas of Autrecourt, J. R. Weinberg, Nicolaus oj

Autrecourt, a Study in 14th Century Thought, Princeton, 1948.

7. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae (hereafter quoted as

5. r/j.), I-II, qu. 49, art. 3, c.

8. M. de Wulf, History of Mediaeval Philosophj, 3rd English

ed. (E. C. Messenger, tr.), London, II, 1938, p. 9.

9. "Here's where you cut it for me." For the proverbial

use of this famous phrase (Nicolas de Briart, reprinted in V.

Mortet and P. Deschamps, Kecueil de textes relatifs a Vhistoire

de r architecture, Paris, II, 1929, p. 290), cf. G. P. in: Ro-

mania, XVIII, 1889, p. 288.

10. 5. Th., I, qu. I, art. 6, c.

11. Ibidem, qu. 89, art. i, c.

12. Ibidem, qu. i, art. 8, ad 2.

13. Ibidem, qu. 2, art. 2, c.

14. Ibidem, qu. i, art. 8, c: "Cum enim fides infallibili

veritati innitatur, impossibile autem sit de vero demon-

strari contrarium, manifestum est probationes quae contra
fidem inducuntur, non esse demonstrationes, sed solubilia
argumenta." Cf. also the passage quoted in F. Ueberweg,

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Grundriss der Geschichte der Philosophie, iith ed., Berlin, II,

1928, p. 429.

i^. 5. Th., qu. 32, art. i, ad 2; qu. 27, art. i and 3. As is

well known, St. Augustine had already likened the relation

between the Three Persons, by way of a similitudo, to that

between memory, intelligence, and love (De Trinitate, XV,

41-42, reprinted in Patrologia Latino, vol. 42, col. 1088 ff.).

16. Ibidem, qu. 27, art. i, ad 3, and passim, for instance,

qu. i^, art. 3, ad 4.

17. This general characterization does not, of course, fully

apply to a thinker such as St. Bonaventure, just as a general

characterization of the High Gothic style does not fully

apply to a monument such as the Cathedral of Bourges. In
both cases we are faced with monumental exceptions in

which earlier, essentially anti-Scholastic — or, respectively,

anti-Gothic — traditions and tendencies are developed within

the framework of a High Scholastic — or, respectively, High-
Gothic — style. As Augustinian mysticism (as cultivated in

the twelfth century) survives in St. Bonaventure, so does the

Early Christian concept of a transeptless or nearly transept-
less basilica (as exemplified by Sens Cathedral, the contem-
plated nave of Suger's St. -Denis, Mantes, and Notre-Dame-
de-Paris) survive in the Cathedral of Bourges (cf. S. McK.

94
 Notes

Crosby, "New Excavations in the Abbey Church of Saint

Denis," Gazetu des Beaux- Arts, 6th ser., XXVI, 1944, pp. 1
1^
ff. and below, pp. 61 ff.). Characteristically, both St. Bona-

venture*s philosophy and Bourges Cathedral (which may be

called an Augustinian church) remained without a following

in some of their most significant aspects : even the Francis-

cans, however critical of Thomism, could not maintain St.

Bonaventure's persistence in an anti-Aristotelian attitude;

even those architects who did not subscribe to the ideals of
Reims and Amiens could not accept the Bourges master's
retention of sixpartite vaults.

18. Cf., e.g., A. Dempf, Die Hauptform mittelaherhcher Welt-

anschauung; eine geisteswissenschaftliche Studie uber die Summa,

Munich and Berlin, 192^.

19. Bonaventure, In Lib. Ill Sent., dist., 9, art. i, qu. 2. For

Bacon's criticism of such rhetorical devices, cf. below, p.

67.

20. Cf. again below, pp. 67 flF.

21. S. Th., Prologue.

22. Alexander of Hales, apparently the first to introduce

this elaborate articulation, divides partes into membra and

articuli; Thomas in S. Th. divides partes into quaestiones and

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Notes

articuh. Commentaries upon the Sentences generally divide

the partes into distinctiones, these being subdivided into
quaestiones and articuli.

23 . This First Part, dealing with God and the order of crea-
tion, is organized as follows:

I. Essence (qu. 2-26);

a. Whether God exists (qu. 2);

1 Whether the proposition of His existence is evi-

dent (art. i);

2. Whether it is demonstrable (art. 2);

3. Whether He does exist (art. 3);

b. How He exists or, rather, does not exist (qu. 3-13);

1 How He is not (qu. 3-1 ) 1

2. How He is known to us (qu. 12);

3. How He is named (qu. 13);

c. His operation (qu. 14-26);

1. His knowledge (qu. 14-18);
2. His will (qu. 19-24);

3. His power (qu. 2^-26);

II. Distinction of Persons (qu. 27-43);

a. Origin or procession (qu. 27);
b. Relations of origin (qu. 28);

c. The Persons as such (qu. 29-43);

III. Procession of creatures (qu. 44-end);
a. Production of creatures (qu. 44-46);

96
 : ; ; ; ;

Notes

b. Distinction of creatures (qu. 47-102);

c. Government of creatures (qu. 103-end).

24. A characteristic masterpiece of a Scholastic eulogy is

a CoUatio in honor of Charles IV by Pope Clement VI (R.

Salomon, M.G.H., Leges, IV, 8, pp. 143 ff.), where Charles
is parallelized with Solomon under the headings: Comparatur,
CoUocatur, Approbatur, Sublimatur, each heading being sub-

divided as follows

A. Comparatur. Solomon
I. in aliquibus pro/ecit :

a. in latriae magnitudine;
b. in prudentiae certitudine;

c. in iustitiae rectitudine;

d. in clementiae dulcedine.

II. In aliquibus excessit:

a. in sapientiae limpitudine;

b. in abundantiae plenitudine

c. in facundiae amplitudine;

d. in quietae vitae pulchritudine.

III. in aliquibus Je/ecit :

a. in luxuriae turpi tudine

b. in perseverantiae longitudine

c. in idolatriae multitudine

d. in rei bellicae fortitudine, etc., etc.

Ridewall's mythographical treatise was edited by H. Liebe-

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schiitz, Fulgentius Metaforalis (Studien der Bibliothek Warburg,

IV, Leipzig and Berlin, 1926); For the scholastic systemati-
zation of Ovid's Metamorphoses (naturalis, spiritualis, magica,
moralis, and de re animata in rem inanimatam, de re inanimata in
rem inanimatam, de re inanimata in rem animatam, de re animata
in rem animatam), cf. F. Ghisalberti, "Mediaeval Biographies
'
of Ovid, ' Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, IX,

1946, pp. 10 ff., especially p. 42.

ig. The early manuscripts, editions, and commentaries

show perfect awareness of the fact that the first Cantica
really begins with Canto 2 (so that it would comprise 33
Canti like the others). In the Trivulziana manuscript of 1 337
(L. Rocca, ed., Milan, 192 1) as well as in such incunabula

as Wendelin of Speyer's Venice edition, we find the follow-

ing rubrics: "Comincia il canto primo de la prima parte

nelaquale fae proemio a tutta V opera' and "Canto secondo
^

dela prima parte nela quale fae proemio ala prima canticha
solamente, cioe ala prima parte di questo libro solamente."
Cf. Jacopo della Lana's Commentary (reprinted in L. Scara-
belli's edition of the Divina Commedia of 1866, pp. 107 and
118): "In questi due primieri Capitoli ... fa proemio e
mostra sua disposizione. . . . Qui {sciL, in Canto 2) segue
suo proema pregando la scienzia che lo aiuti a trattare tale

poetria, sicome e usanza delli poeti in li principii delli suoi

trattati, e li orator! in li principii delle sue arenghe.'*

98
 Notes

26. T. E. Mommsen (Intr.), Petrarch, Sonnets and Songs, New

York, 1946, p. xxvii.

27. R. Arnheim, ''Gestalt and Art,'' Journal of Aesthetics and

Art Criticism, 1943,
PP- 7i ff- ; i^^em, "Perceptual Abstrac-
tion and Art," Psjchological Review, LIV, 1947, pp. 66 ff.,

especially p. 79.

28. S. Th. I, qu. 5", art. 4, ad i.

29. Paris, Bibl. Nat., Nouv. Acq. 13^9 and London, Brit.

Mus., Add. 1 1662 (cf. M. Prou, "Desseins du XF siecle et

peintures du XIII^ siecle," Revue de V Art Chretien, XXIII,

1890, pp. 122 ff. ; also M. Schild-Bunim, Space in Mediaeval
Painting, New York, 1940, p. 115^).

30. Exceptions: Fecamp (after 1168), having compound

piers throughout; the eastern bay of St. -Leu d'Esserent (ca.

1
1 90) having an alternating system; St.-Yved-de-Braine
(after 1200), having compound piers in the chevet; Long-

pont, having monocylindrical piers.

31. The experiments in the seventh and ninth pair of nave

piers in the Cathedral of Laon had no appreciable effect upon
the subsequent development; and the piers of Soissons, cyl-
inders with only one colonnette facing the nave, are in my
opinion a reduction of the full-fledged Chartres pilier can-

tonnk with colonnettes on all four sides. Perfunctorily imi-

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tated in Notre-Dame-de-Paris (second pair of piers from

the west), this type is chiefly important for its influence upon
provincial structures erected after the middle of the thir-
teenth century (cf. note 6i), and upon the supports in the
rond-point —and in the rond-point only — of Reims and Beau-
vais Cathedrals. For the development of the pilier cantonnS

see pp. 79 ff.

32. Some architectural historians are inclined to identify

the climactic phase of the Gothic style with Reims and
Amiens (nave), and to consider the radical elimination of

the wall in the nave of St. -Denis, the Sainte-Chapelle, St.-

Nicaise-de-Reims, or St.-Urbain-de-Troyes as the beginning
of a disintegration or decadence (^^Gothique rajonnant** as
opposed to ''Gothique classique*'). This is, of course, a matter
of definition (cf. P. Frankl, **A French Gothic Cathedral:
Amiens," Art in America, XXXV, 1947, pp. 294 ff.). But it

would seem that the Gothic style, measured by its own

standards of perfection, only fulfills itself where the wall is

reduced to the limit of technical possibilities while, at the

same time, a maximum of ''inferability" is reached. I even

suspect that the above-mentioned view has some purely
verbal foundation in that the expressions "classic High
Gothic" or ^^Gothique classique'^ automatically suggest the
plastic standards of Greek and Roman, but not Gothic,

100
 Notes

"classicality.'* In fact the masters of Amiens themselves

eagerly adopted the glazed triforium of St. -Denis as soon
as they had become familiar with it (transept and chevet).

33. Viollet-le-Duc's interpretation is carried to an extreme

in L. Lemaire, "La logique du style Gothique," Revue neo-
scolastique, XVII, 1910, pp. 234 ff.

34. P. Abraham, VioUet-le-Duc et le rationalisme medieval,

Paris, 1935- (cf. the discussion in Bulletin de r office interna-

tional des Instituts d^ archeologie et d'histoire de Van, II, 193^).

3^. E. Gall, Niederrheinische und normannische Architektur im

Zeitalter der Fruhgotik, Berlin, 191^; idem, Die gotische Bau-

kunst in Frankreich und Beutschland , I, Leipzig, 1925. Further

literature concerning the Pol Abraham controversy is cited

in G. Kubler, *'A Late Gothic Computation of Rib Vault

Thrusts," Gazette des Beaux-Arts, 6th ser., XXVI, 1944, pp.

13^ ff. ; to be added: Pol Abraham, "Archeologie et resis-

tance des materiaux," La Construction Moderne, L, 1 934-3 S»

pp. 788 ff. (kindly brought to my attention by Prof. M.
Schapiro).

36. Abbot Suger on the Abbej Church of Saint-Denis and Its

Art Treasures (E. Panofsky, ed.), Princeton, 1946, p. 108,

8; for the emendation of veluti into voluti, see E. Panofsky,

'^Postlogium Sugerianum,'' Art Bulletin, XXIX, 1947, p. 119-

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Notes

37. See G. Kubler, loc. cit.

38. Cf. E. Brunet, "La restauration de la Cathedrale dc

Soissons," Bulletin Monumental, LXXXVII, 1928, pp. 6^ ff.

39. Cf. H. Masson, "Le rationalisme dans I'architecture du

Moyen-Age," Bulletin Monumental, XCIV, 1935-, pp. 29 ff.

40. See, for instance, the treatise convincingly interpreted

by Kubler, loc. cit., or the French expert Mignot's violent
and justified objections to the outrageous theory of his
Milanese confreres according to which "archi spiguti non
dant impulzam contrafortibus" (cf. now^ J. S. Ackerman,
'*
'Ars Sine Scientia Nihil Est* ;GothicTheorypf Architecture
at the Cathedral of Milan," An Bulletin, XXXI, 1949, pp.
84 ff.). As evidenced by the Milan texts (reprinted in Acker-
man, loc. cit., pp. 108 ff.), the terms contrejort and arc-
boutant C'archi butanti") w^ere familiar even in Latin and

Italian by the end of the fourteenth century, and both w^ere

used in a figurative sense as early as in the fifteenth and six-

teenth centuries (pictionnaire historique de la langue franacise

public par r Academie Francaise, III, Paris, 1888, pp. ^7^ ff .

E. Littre, Dictionnaire de la langue francaise, I, Paris, 1863,

p. 185-; La Curne de la Palaye, Dictionnaire historique de

r ancienne languefrancaise, W f
Paris and Niort, 1877, p. 227).

The term bouterec (F. Godefroy, Lexique de Vancien Francais,

Paris, 1 90 1, p. 62) must have been in use before i 388 when

102
 Notes

**buttress" occurs in English, and estribo is constantly em-

ployed in the treatise interpreted by Kubler, loc. cit.

41 . Since this upper range of flying buttresses is superfluous

as far as the stability of the vaults is concerned, its presence
has even been accounted for by mere *
'timidity " (J. Guadet,
Elements de theorie d' architecture, Paris, n.d.. Ill, p. 188). To
explain it as a countermeasure against wind pressure w^as

proposed by K. J. Conant, "Observations on the Vaulting

Problems of the Period 1 08 8-1 21 1," Gazette des Beaux- Arts,

6th ser., XXVI, 1944, pp. 127 f.

42. See E. Gall, opp. cit., especially Die gotische Baukunst,

pp. 31 ff.

43. See J. Gaudet, op. cit., pp. 200 ff., fig. 1076.

44. G. Vasari, Le Vite del piu eccellenti pittori, scultori e archi-

tetti, II Part, Proemio: "Perche nelle colonne non osser-
varono (scil., the Gothic masters) quella misura e propor-
zione che richiedeva Tarte, ma a la mescolata con una loro
regola senza regola faccendole grosse grosse o sottili sottili,
come tomava lor meglio." In thus observing that the scale
of the members in a Gothic edifice is not determined by
anthropomorphic considerations, and that their proportions
can change w^ithin one and the same building, Vasari — his

acumen sharpened by hostility — has hit upon a fundamental

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principle distinguishing Gothic from Classical as well as

from Renaissance and Baroque architecture. Cf. C. Neu-
mann, **Die Wahl des Platzes fiir Michelangelos David in

Florenz im Jahr 1^04; zur Geschichte des Massstabprob-

lems," Kepertohumfur Kunstwissenschaft, XXXVIII, 191 6, pp.

I flF. Also E. Panofsky, **Das erste Blatt aus dem 'Libro*

Giorgio Vasaris ; eine Studie iiber die Beurteilung der Gotik
in der italienischen Renaissance," Stadeljahrbuch, VI, 1929,

pp. 4 ff., especially pp. 42 ff.

45. See S. McK. Crosby, loc. cit. ; for Bourges, cf. above,

note 17.

46. Until fairly recently, the first instance of a four-story

arrangement vv^as believed to occur in Tournai {ca. iioo).
Two very slightly earlier though much more primitive in-
stances — again demonstrating the close interrelation be-

tvv^een Flanders and England —have, however, been discov-

ered in Tewkesbury (founded in 1 087) and Pershore (founded \
between 1090 and iioo); cf. J. Bony, "Tewkesbury et
Pershore, deux elevations a quatre etages de la fin du XI^
siecle," Bulletin Monumental , 1937, pp. 281 ff., ^03 ff.

47. The addition of secondary side aisles in Cologne Cathe-

dral (otherwise closely following the plan of Amiens Cathe-
dral) represents a sacrifice of the major consideration (in

this case, balance between centralistic and longitudinal

104
 Notes

tendencies) to the minor one (in this case, conformity of

nave and choir) not unlike that which can be observed in the
treatment of the supports (cf., pp. 8^ ff.).

48. 5. Th. I, qu. I, art. 8, ad 2.

49. Patrologia Latina, vol. 178, cols. 1339 ff.

go. Roger Bacon, Opus minus as quoted in H. Felder, Ge-

schichte der wissenschaftlichen Studien im Franziskanerorden, Frei-
burg, 1904, p. ^i^: "Quae hunt in textu principaliter
legendo et praedicando, sunt tria principaliter; scilicet,

divisiones per membra varia, sicut artistae faciunt, concor-

dantiae violentes, sicut legistae utuntur, et consonantiae

rhythmicae, sicut grammatici." For the anticipation of the

Sic et Non method by the canonists (Ivo of Chartes, Remold
of Constance), see M. Grabmann, Die Geschichte der scholas-
tischen Methode, Freiburg, 1 909, I, pp. 234 ff. ; I and II, passim,

£1. William of Ockham, Quodhbeta, I, qu. 10, as quoted in

Ueberweg, op. cit., p. 5^81: "Quidquid de hoc senserit

Aristoteles, non euro, quia ubique dubitative videtur

loqui/*

52. William of Ockham, In I sent., dist. 27, qu. 3, quoted

^74 f "Pauca vidi de dictis illius doctoris. Si

ibidem, pp. . ;

enim omnes vices, quibus respexi dicta sua, simul congre-

garentur, non complerent spatium unius diei naturalis . . .

105

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 .

Notes

quam materiam tractavi, et fere omnes alias in primo libro,

antequam vidi opinionem hie recitatam.**

^3. See H. Kunze, Das Fassadenproblem der franzosischen

Fr'uh- und Hochgotik, Strassburg, 1 9 1 2

^4. Germany, generally averse to roses in the west facade

(except for Strassburg and its sphere of influence, in contrast

to Cologne, etc.), accepted the rose-and-window combina-
tion for the longitudinal walls of hall churches when elabo-
rated into facades as in Minden, Oppenheim, St. Catherine's
in Brandenburg.

gg. Libergier's solution was obviously inspired by the

transepts of Reims Cathedral (before 1241), where the big
roses are already inscribed within pointed arches ; but here
the whole does not, as yet, constitute a "window." The
spandrels above and below the roses are not, as yet, glazed,
and no vertical connection exists between the roses and the
windows beneath them.

5'6. Villard de Honnecourt, Kritische Gesamtausgabe (H. R.

Hahnloser, ed.), Vienna, 1935^, pp. 165 fF., pi. 62.

^7. Cf. now J. Bony, "French Influences on the Origins of

English Gothic Architecture," Journal of the Warburg and
Courtauld Institutes, XII, 1949, pp. i fF., especially pp. 8 ff.

106
 Notes

gS. See, e.g., A. Kingsley Porter, Medieval Architecture, New

Haven, 191 2, II, p. 272. Occasionally, as in St.-Martin-de-
BoschervilleorSt.-Etienne-de-Caen (galleries), this principle

had already been applied in Romanesque structures; but it

became "standard," it seems, only after Sens, where three

different thicknesses are "expressed" by capitals of three

different sizes. There was, however, always an inclination

to overlook minor differences in thickness in order to pre-

serve uniformity among several adjacent capitals.

59. In Soissons, St.-Leu-d'Esserent, etc., we find an even

more emphatic reversion to the original Canterbury type:

a "nave colonnette" with an individual capital half as high

as that of the pier.

60. This applies also to the capitals of the major and minor
colonnettes of the west portals which thus form a significant
contrast to the corresponding ones in Amiens.

6 1 . A similar adaptation of a continuous shaft to the concept

of a pilier cantonne can be observed in the later piers of Beau-

vais (1284 ff.), in the piers of Seez (ca. 1260) and in the
later piers of Huy (131 1 ff.)- In the two latter instances,

however, the colonnettes facing the arcades and the side

aisles are omitted as though the idea of a continuous shaft
had been superimposed, not upon the normal pilier cantonne

107

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 .

Notes

(with four colonnettes) but upon the Soissons pier (which

has only one) ; cf. note 3 1

62. Villard de Honnecourt, op. cit., pp. 69 fF., pi. 29; the
inscription, "Istud bresbiterium inuenerunt Ulardus de
Hunecort et Petrus de Corbeia inter se disputando," was
added by a disciple of Villard known as "Master 2."

63. The only superficially similar alternation of chapels

vaulted separately and chapels vaulted, Soissons fashion,

under one keystone with the adjacent sector of the outer
ambulatory can be observed in Chartres, where this arrange-

ment is motivated by the necessity of re-using the founda-

tions of the eleventh-century choir with its three deep and
widely separated chapels. But in Chartres the Soissons-like
chapels are really nothing but shallow protuberances of the
outer ambulatory, so that all the seven keystones could be
placed on the same perimeter. In Villard de Honnecourt 's
and Pierre de Corbie's ideal plan they are fully developed
units, their keystones placed, not in the center but on the

periphery of the adjacent sector of the outer ambulatory.

108
Illustrations

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Figure 1. Tombstone of the Architect Hugues Libergier (died 1263),
Reims Cathedral.

Ill

^ ij:^,.-
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..rteicr/.^fl
n

Figure 2. Autun Cathedral, west portal. Ca. 1130.

112
Figure 3. Paris, Notre-Dame, central porul of the west facade (much
restored). Ca. iiis-1220.

113

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Figure 4. Henry I of France bestowing privileges upon the Priory of
St.-Martin-des-Champs. Book illumination between 1079 and 1096,
London, British Museum, ms. Add. 1162, fol. 4.

114
 \^^flnt^ry/£t/ A'^f^

(T pniiplrttnrintfi tnamni MfUif* ntntnia-

CanpUuit nnimno fcnr mVo notiutu tnr,o.
Vtar* 1 mttntnr' snn* illf quifCqiiut iiUir- f

fUm nift pn^rrcc ni<!«lTvf tuAointtt innrtrr-

^tifhnitr fmnt* noitiamc6c6ccdincfi-;nt*-
£'3111^1^ tonum efitoii ftsartcilctxynmn-
xm' t a- ipfip aHnofiti ^tlfit^lr tpfit-

Figure 5. Henry I of France bestowing privileges upon the Priory of

St.-Martin-des-Champs. Book illumination of ca. i2jo, Paris, Biblio-
theque Nationale, ms. Nouv. Acq. lat. 13^9, fol. i.

115

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 -r^-^ -..**<

Figure 6. Philip I of France bestowing privileges* upon the Priory of

St.-Martin-des-Champs. Book illumination between 1079 ^^^ 1096,
London, British Museum, ms. Add. 1162, fol. 5 v.

116
 Jhr mttrltnnP«|ii» ^^nnii^- rrrmc {nonlf o^lialttitr p{Hn iRttttn*
(IVirnno MCf irfrtrl^ir mCmiw in cdrm*
ilttCMr aUlDiwr in Amtfnoti J» oOtr fola»c(cm6tnnniradt6tr cOctii*
OtftDtimdu itdffiiltr dd fancnO**

11 'm--

upon the Prioi^ of

Figure 7. Philip I of France bestowing privileges
of ca. 1250, Paris, B.blio-
St.-Martin-des-Champs. Book illumination
fo»- 6.
theque Nationale, ms. Nouv. Acq. 1359.
lat.

117

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 1

118
Figure 9. Pima (Saxony), Marienkirche, interior. Begun ijo2,

119

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 Of St.

tototrsi^vauitXXXotnt '

iifiuioUJ '<

^cno^'io

outtr buttresses °
and/arr vault
built or repaired
hetwten 14S7 a
and t^i

6. cfH2 to ins?
posstbbf tncioud 1130
5. c.no^-f*:
ptrhaf* ttautttd iHf t/3S
higfi oaxtit c.fjts-^; fettinS',
rcpaux'd between, itigand njo
sirengtivened ihm and c /7<rc
ptrhctpavauUndlaltr
JvUshaeL j^g-gS? S.XUoeru, andctuS

$.S.tower begun, late Xtl cent,

hoifi totoert largeU/ buittcfX20-28; one "augnenUd^" bcUveen 1^X2. Mtd fj43,
one tower (lattH?) remade, porch built >jr id d^ccraUd betuixn J4SLf. and t^S7
. GtnerairwowUxcn cr/so-ctySr, nete altar*: newsta/ls jj'Si. Demolition lyifS-cJSi^

Figure 10. Cluny, Third Abbey Church, groundplan, 1088-ca. 11 20;

narthex ca. iiio-ca. 1 1^0. (After K. J. Conant, "The Third Church

ol' Cluny," Medieval Studies in Memory of A. Kir}gslejf Porter, Cambridge,

1939)

120
 **'**
t.

4-
-i^i , I.

n t

i^
* f

^l-t?
Figure 11. Amiens Cathedral, groundplan. Begun 1220.

121

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 * t

n
^ - - «-

- •
41
>f ^ r w.
>*"*'

i^
^
Figure 12. Sens Cathedral, groundplan.
Constructed ca. 1140-ca. 1168. (After
E. Gall, Die gotische Baukunst in

Frankreich und Deutscbland,

Leipzig, 1925.)

figure ij. Laon Cathedral, groundplan.

Begun ca. 1 160.

122
Swr->fc|

123

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124
 no

125

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Figure ij. Lessay (Normandy), Abbey Church, interior. End of the
Xlth century.

126
Figure l8. Laon Cathedral, interior of the choir. Begun after 120^
in conformity with elevation designed ca. 1 160.

127

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Figure 19. Chartres Cathedral, interior of the nave. Begun shortly
after 1 194.

128
Figure 20. Reims Cathedral, interior of the nave. Begun 121 1.

129

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 Figure 21. Amiens Cathedral, interior of the nave. Begun 1220.

BO
Figure 22. St. -Denis, interior of the nave. Begun 1231.

131

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Figure 23. Caen, St.-Etiienne, vaults of the northern transept. Ca.
1 110. (After E. Gall, op. cit.)

132
 133

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Figure 2^. Soissons Cathedral, section of the northern nave wall
damaged during World War I. Beginning of the XI 1 1th century.

134
 135

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Figure 28. Durham Cathedral, concealed flying buttresses. End of
the Xlth century. (After R. W. BilHngs, Architectural Illustrations and
Description of the Cathedral of Durham, London, 1843.)

136
 .

Figure 29. Reims Cathedral, open Hying buttresses

2
of the nave. Design estoblished ca. 1 1 1

137

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Figure JO. St. -Denis, west facade. Dedicated 1140. (After an en-
graving by A. and E. Rouargue, executed before the restoration of

1833-1837.)

138
 \ t

Figure 31. Paris, Notre-Dame, west fa<;ade. Begun shortly after 1200;
clerestory ca. 1220.

139

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Figure 32. Laon Cathedral, west facade. Designed ca. 1160; executed
from ca. 1 190.

140
 ^^
'

completed
Amiens west fa,;ade. Begun .220; clerestory
f/aur. 33.
joo.
1236; tracery of the rose ca. 1

141

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Fiffurc 34- Reims, St.-Nicaise (destroyed), west fa<;-ade. Between ca.

1 2 JO and 1263; rose restoretl ca. 1550. (After an engraving by

N. de Son, of 1625.)
142
 .

Figure 35- Reims, St.-Nicaise (destroyed)

rose in the west fa9ade (partial

reconstruction )

Figure 36. Reims Cathedral, nave window.

Designed ca. 121 1.

143

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 ^ure J7. Caen, St.-Trinite, triforium. Ca.
ii,,

Figure 38. Sens Cathedral, tritorium

galleries. Towards i ISO.

144
Figure 39. Noyon Cathedral, nave galleries and triforium. Design
established ca. 11 70; eastern bay executed between 1170 and ii8^,
rest later.

145

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Figure 40. Chalons-sur-Mame, Notre -Dame-en- Vaux, choir galleries

and triforium. Ca. 1185.

146
 established ca.
Figure 41. Chartres Cathedral, nave triforium. Design
1 194.

147

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Figure 42. Reims Cathedral, nave triforium. Design established ca.

121 1.

148
Figure 43. Villard de Honnecourt, interior elevation of Reims Ca-
thedral. Drawing of ca. 123J, Paris, Bibliotheque Nationale (en-

larged detail).

149

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Figure 44. Amiens Cathedral, nave triforium. Design estabHshed ca.
1220.

150
Figure 45. St. -Denis, nave triforium. Design established ca. 1231

151

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152
 , .

Eim
Figure 47. Chartres Cathedral, capital

of nave pier. Design established

ca. 1 194.
n
Figure 48.
1
Reims Cathedral,
nave pier. Design established
ca I 2 1 1
capital of

Figure 49. Amiens Cathedral, capital Figure SO- St. -Denis, capital of nave
of nave pier. Design established pier. Design established ca. i 2 3 i

ca. 1220.

153

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 Figure St- Amiens Cathedral, cross

section of pier in relation to wall

and vault-ribs. Design established
ca. I220.

Figure 52. St. -Denis, cross section of

pier in relation to wall and vault-ribs.

Design established ca. 1231.

Figure 53. Cologne Cathedral, cross section of

pier in relation to wall and vault-ribs. Design
established cd. 1248.

154
Figure S4- Canterbury Cathedral, Figure SB- Chartres Cathedral, cap-
capital of pier, ii 74-1 178 (diagram). ital of pier. Design established
shortly after 11 94 (diagram).

Figure S^- Reims Cathedral, capital Figure £7- Amiens Cathedral, capital

of pier. Design established ca. iiii of pier. Design established ca. 1220
(diagram).

Figure 5*. Beauvais Cathedral, capital Figure £9- St. -Denis, capital of pier.

of pier. Design established ca. 1 247 Design established ca. 1231 (diagram).
(diagram).

155

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Figure 6o. Villard de Honnecourt, ideal groundplan of a chevet
resulting from his discussion with Pierre de Corbie. Drawing of ca.

1235, Paris, Bibliotheque Nationale.

156
ERWIN PANOFSKY
Erwin Panofsky was born in Germany in 1892. Educated
Munich, and Freiburg universities, he became a
at Berlin,
lecturer in the history of art at Hamburg University in
1921. He wasa professor there from 1926 until 1933. From
1931 to 1933 he was also a visiting professor at New York
University. In 1934 he was a visiting lecturer at Princeton
University,where he has been since 1935 a professor at the
Institute forAdvanced Study. He was Charles Eliot Norton
Professor of Poetry at Harvard University during 1947-48.
Among his other works in English are Studies in Iconology
(1939), The Codex Huyghens and Leonardo da Vinci's Art
Theory (1940), Albrecht Durer (first edition, 1943),
Abbot Suger on the Abbey Church of St. Denis and Its Art
Treasures (1946), Early Netherlandish Painting: Its Origin
and Character (1953), and Galileo as a Critic of the Visual
Arts (1954).

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 ART HISTORY.F581. $4.95
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Gothic
Architecture and Scholasticism
An
inquiry into the analogy of the arts,
philosophy, and religion in the Middle Ages.
ERWIN PANOFSKY

It is sometimes thought that art, philosophy, Hterature develop in

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