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 JEAN GIMPEL
Translated by Carl F. Barnes, Jr.

The Cathedral
Builders

Evergreen Profile Book 21

GROVE PRESS, INC. EVERGREEN BOOKS LTD.

NEW YORK LONDON
 FIRST PUBLISHED IN THIS EDITION 1961. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 60-6216
Evergreen Profile Books are published
in the United States by Grove Press, Inc.
64 University Place New York 3, N.Y.
in Great Britain by Evergreen Books Ltd.
20 New Bond Street London, W. 1
First published in France by Editions du Seuil, Paris, as Les Batisseurs de Cathédral
MANUFACTURED BY MOUTON & CO., IN THE NETHERLANDS
The Cathedral Builders
by Jean Gimpel

Contents

5 The Fantastic Middle Ages

15 St. Bernard and Abbot Suger

37 The Creative Outburst

57 The Canon-Builders

71 Working the Stone

ot Freemasons and Sculptors

The Architects

The Monastic Builders

Engineers and Technicians

The End of a World

Chronological Landmarks

Bibliography

191 Notes
 THE FANTASTIC MIDDLE AGES

In a period of three centuries, from 1050 to 1350,

several million tons of stone were quarried in France to
build eighty cathedrals, five hundred large churches, and
tens of thousands of parish churches. More stone was
quarried in France during these three centuries than in
ancient Egypt during its whole history — and the Great
Pyramid alone has a volume of 40,500,000 cubic feet.
Foundations of some of the great cathedrals were im-
bedded as deep as thirty feet —- the average depth of a
Paris subway station — and in certain cases formed a
stone mass as large as that above ground.
In the Middle Ages there was one church or chapel
for approximately every two hundred people. These cult
edifices consequently covered a considerable area in ratio
to the small cities of the time. For example, in Norwich,
Lincoln, and York - cities of five to ten thousand in-
habitants — there were, respectively, fifty, forty-nine, and
forty-one churches. The ambitious who wanted to recon-
struct their church on a larger plot were always faced
with serious problems: it was often necessary to destroy
one or two neighboring churches and build new lodgings
for the expropriated. The area of Amiens Cathedral,
covering about 208,000 square feet, permitted the entire
population of nearly ten thousand people to attend the
same service. For comparison, imagine in a modern city
- of one million people a stadium built in the middle of
town large enough to accommodate the whole population,
remembering that the largest stadium in the world seats
only 180,000.

Baux: the quarries

 Nave, tower, and spire heights are astonishing. An
architect could build a fourteen-story building in the
choir of Beauvais Cathedral before reaching the vault,
157 feet 6 inches above the floor. To equal the masters
of Chartres, who pushed their cathedral’s spire up to
345 feet 6 inches, the present municipality would have
to build a thirty-story skyscraper. To equal the Stras-
bourgers who raised their spire to 466 feet would require
a forty-story skyscraper.

There is no lack of documentation concerning the

builders of these immense edifices; yet there are few
situations in which legend is not mixed with historical
truth: legends about corporations, secrets, volunteer labor,
builder monks, etc.
For half a century French historians and archaeologists,
with one worthy exception, have abandoned the study of
history and construction to concentrate on interesting
questions, but their interests have been so specialized
that the complex of problems posed by medieval archi-
-tecture seems to have escaped them. It was different in
the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth,
when the French historians considered the subject in its
totality. Such names come to mind as Jules Quicherat
and Victor Mortet, but above all, Viollet-le-Duc, whom
it is now fashionable to criticize. Yet one need only
reread his Discourses on Architecture and his Diction-
naire raisonné de l’Architecture francaise du XIe au XVIe
Siécle to realize that he was one of the great men of the
nineteenth century. He made mistakes, surely, but who
doesn’t? His knowledge of medieval society and the
history of construction is remarkable even today. He is
reproached for having reconstructed the Chateau de
Pierrefonds with a certain “brutality,” which is true, but
the ruinous state of the chateau, which Napoleon III
demanded be restored, must not be forgotten. If Viollet-
le-Duc had not worked energetically, many of the
buildings we admire today would no longer exist. We
reproach Viollet-le-Duc his excesses, but we must ask
ourselves if the next century will not reproach our re-
storers of historic monuments for not having spent enough
6
money on laboratory research to discover the cause of
stone decay.
But, as mentioned above, one very worthy historian has
been an exception. What is more, he is not a medievalist.
In 1953 Pierre du Colombier published a remarkable
work, Les Chantiers des Cathédrales, which is as inter-
esting for the general public as for the specialists to whom
it gives numerous references. And whereas French re-
searches have been little inclined to this field until now,
English and German scholars have continued the work
of the nineteenth century. The latter have primarily
studied fourteenth- and fifteenth-century German con-
struction — the period of the great German architectural
workshops — but their conclusions must be used ju-
diciously in understanding twelfth- and thirteenth-century
workshops because there was, in the second half of the
thirteenth century, a transformation of working con-
ditions in Europe, particularly in France.
By contrast, the works undertaken in England during
the last thirty years by G. G. Coulton, John Harvey,
L. F. Salzman, and especially D. Knoop and G. P. Jones
in The Medieval Mason and in the periodical Ars Quatuor
Coronatorum offer a better understanding of workshop
life during the “cathedral crusade,” and permit scholars
to dispel legends that cloud the truth. These historians
have recognized the importance of freedom in their work.
They have studied with equal precision the evolution of
freemasonry transactions and the specific roles of monks
in the construction of their abbeys. Unfortunately, their
works are little known in Europe and have never been
translated. It is one of the paradoxes of the twentieth
century that although political news is immediately trans-
lated and transmitted throughout the world, and scientific
works circulate rapidly, the results of historical research
must still wait several decades to cross frontiers. In defense
of historians it must be admitted that in this case it is
sometimes difficult, not to say impossible, to obtain certain
English works. For example, the periodical Ars Quatuor
Coronatorum, containing works of primary importance,
is published in London by Masonic Lodge 2076. This
periodical is not sold and therefore is not found in any
public library, which is unfortunate, for the lodge has
8

Church of I’Isle-Jourdain: stone decomposition

carefully and methodically studied various aspects of
medieval construction and, more important, has published
the accounts (or pay ledgers) of thirteenth- and fourteenth-
century English religious and civil workshops.
All histories of medieval architecture make the classic
distinction between Romanesque and Gothic monuments
and agree that the transition took place in the mid-twelfth
century. This distinction supposes that the Gothic style
had specific features such as the flying buttress or the
ogival (rib) vault; but many Gothic churches were built

Saint-Germain at Auxerre: a ‘‘Romanesque” church (the crypt)

without flying buttresses, and people are finally beginning
to realize that the celebrated ogival vaults did not have
the importance formerly attributed to them. There was
no fundamental distinction between a Romanesque and a
Gothic building, but there was an enormous difference
between a church of the mid-eleventh century and one
of the thirteenth century. This difference was the ac-
cumulated result of hundreds of little technical discov-
eries by ingenious architects and workers — the cathedral
builders.

Saint-Etienne at Beauvais: a ‘“‘Gothic’’ church

 There were no builders of “Romanesque” cathedrals
or “Gothic” cathedrals per se, no more than there were
Romanesque or Gothic workshops. There were only some
builders who created and others who copied them, relying
on older techniques. This is important to emphasize. It
is amazing to realize that for 250 years, from the end of
the thirteenth century to the beginning of the sixteenth,
a period during which the transepts of Sens, Senlis, and
Beauvais were built, there was practically no progress
made in construction technique. Flamboyant Gothic,'
appearing in the late fourteenth century, was only a super-
ficial decoration added into a technical skeleton perfected
from the eleventh through the thirteenth century. For
250 years architects were inventive, and during the
following 250 years they were content to copy their prede-
cessors. This halt in architectural development at the end
of the thirteenth century was a phenomenon connected
to all aspects of medieval history: religious, technical,
economic, social, and psychological. The arbitrary sepa-
ration of Romanesque and Gothic in the middle of the
twelfth century corresponds to no particular historical
event, whereas the second half of the thirteenth was a
striking epoch in the history of the Middle Ages. The
‘period from 1050 to the second half of the thirteenth
century was, for Europe in general and France in par-
ticular, a dynamic period of ascendancy. It was an age
of creativity during the course of which some of the
greatest spirits of the Western world were to pray, teach,
or govern — St. Bernard, Abélard, St. Francis of Assisi,
St. Thomas Aquinas, Roger Bacon, or St. Louis. And
the cathedral builders were to raise those extraordinary
churches that would be testimonals of this high epoch of
medieval Christianity.
If a date must be chosen to mark the end of the dynamic
spiritual enthusiasm of this society, it would be 1277,
the year of the doctrinal condemnations by the Bishop
of Paris and the date when Thomism became confused
with Averronism. Gabriel Le Bras writes on this subject,
“During half a century, from 1227 to’ 1277, canon law
reached the height of its course,” and’ adds,

the decline of medieval Christianity announces itself

12
Notre-Dame de |’Epine near Chélons-sur-Marne

in the new spiritual state and feeling with which canon

law tried to exorcise the revolt against the established
Church, the affirmation of the independence of civil
societies, and the development of the plastic arts and
sacred music. .

We will return to this general crisis, after which the

Western world entered definitively into its modern age,
long before that period we conveniently call the “Renais-
sance.”

13
 ST. BERNARD AND ABBOT SUGER

The spread of Christianity and the history of medieval

builders are closely connected with the development of
monasticism. In the sixth century St. Benedict founded
Monte Cassino and formulated his Rule of Life. It spread
with amazing speed from one place to another and Europe
was soon covered with Benedictine monasteries. Bene-
dict’s Rule must be considered one of the great historical
events of the Middle Ages. It organized the spiritual
life, arranging manual labor around the seven Canonical
Hours. This gave it its force, yet its observance became
relaxed at certain times, necessitating a reform of the
Benedictine order. Two such reforms are especially
interesting: that of Cluny in the tenth century and that
of Citeaux in the twelfth. The Cluniac reform followed
the Saracen, Norman, and Magyar raids that ended the
Carolingian Renaissance and threw the Benedictines into
a life of confusion and laxity. At the beginning of the
tenth century, William the Pious, Duke of Aquitaine,
founded at the small village of Cluny the monastery from
which the prodigious Cluniac spirit was diffused. Its
civilizing influence on the Western world must have been
preponderant. In several years, in a feudal and brutal
world, Cluniac monks covered Europe from Poland to
Portugal with some fourteen hundred houses and de-
pendencies.
To keep in touch with his abbots and priors, the Abbot-
Father of Cluny periodically called assemblies to which
representatives of the monasteries came to report on the
state of each community and receive instructions. The
15
Thoronet Abbey
Abbot of Cluny worked ceaselessly to enlarge his monas-
tery to accomodate the hundreds of delegates who came
from every part of France, Spain, and Hungary. By the
beginning of the twelfth century the abbey could lodge
460 monks and handle two thousand visitors. The
immense church constructed between 1080 and 1135,
and destroyed under the Empire, was as large as St.
Peter’s in Rome.
The problems posed in constructing these fourteen
hundred Cluniac monasteries brought about a consider-
able advance in the science of construction in western
Europe. The first abbeys were built of wood since the
art of stonecutting had all but been lost. St. Odilon,
Abbot of Cluny, made this explicit when he said, “I found
a wooden abbey and left it in marble.” He had antique
marble columns shipped to Cluny via the Danube and
Rhone rivers.. In organizing the pilgrimage to Santiago
de Compostela to induce pilgrims into Spain and interest
Europe in the Christian reconquest of Moorish-occupied
Spain, Cluny encouraged the construction or enlargement
of vast basilicas on this important pilgrimage route.
The Cluniac order gave a number of popes to the
papacy, among them, Gregory VII, the great eleventh-
century Pope, and Urban II, who preached the First
Crusade in 1096. The order was headed by such men as
St. Hugues, one of the most perfect representatives of the
monastic ideal, and Peter the Venerable, the last great
abbot of Cluny, who had the genius to have the Koran
translated with geographical and historical references to
the beliefs of Islam in order to fight the Moslem world
on an intellectual level.
At the end of the eleventh century the Cluniacs relaxed
from a strict observance of St. Benedict’s Rule. And in
1098, St. Robert, Abbot of Molesmes, founded a monas-
tery in the middle of the swampy forest at Citeaux
(Diocese of Langres) to reform the Rule. This new
monastery really began to prosper only in 1112 when
Bernard, a young nobleman of the region, entered it with
a few companions. When Bernard died in 1153, the
Cistercian order had 343 monasteries and before the end
of the century, 530. St. Bernard, the spirit and power of
the order, organized the Second Crusade in 1147 and was:
16
Urban II dedicating Cluny

the arbiter of European politics as well as Christianity’s

chief officer. His determination to comply with absolute
strictness to St. Benedict’s Rule had important spiritual,
social, economic, and technical consequences.
Cluny’s success was due to the desire of pious and
energetic men hoping to pull Christian Europe out of the
barbarism of the tenth and eleventh centuries. Citeaux’s
success was due to the austere will of a group desiring to
retire from the vain pleasures of the Western world in
which a joie de vivre and a materialistic spirit were be-
ginning to spread. The West, having lived in economic
17
isolation since the collapse of the Roman Empire, began
to sense its own material destitution on contact with the
Orient and the commercial activities in Italian cities during
the First Crusade. Society coveted precious stones, ivory,
perfume, and beautiful silks from the Orient.
St. Bernard and his companions withdrew from the
world in which this taste for life and luxury, even among
the Cluniacs, had replaced the love of God. To protect
them from every worldly temptation, the order required
its monks to rid themselves of every luxury and retire
to the forests. Having cleared the woods and created
model farms of several hundred acres — in contrast to the
great artisan, feudal farms — the Cistercians built their
great abbeys. The order’s constructions reflected the
austerity of its Rule. Neither towers nor porches were
built; there was no sculpture and no stained glass windows.
Whereas Cluniac churches were covered with gold and
paintings, Cistercian churches were bare. Stones were left
undressed.
In his famous letter addressed to the Cluniacs, St.
Bernard lashed out at the rich color of their churches:

I say naught of the vast height of your [Cluniac]

churches, their immoderate length, their superfluous
breadth, the costly polishings, the curious carvings and
paintings which attract the worshipper’s gaze and hinder
his attention, and seem to me in some sort a revival
of the ancient Jewish rites. Let this pass, however:
say that this is done for God’s honour. But I, as a
monk, ask of my brother monks... “Tell me, ye poor
(if, indeed, ye be poor), what doeth this gold in your
sancturay?” And indeed the bishops have an excuse
which monks have not; for we know that they, being
debtors to the wise and the unwise, and unable to excite
the devotion of carnal folk by spiritual things, do so by
bodily adornments. But we [monks] who have now
come forth from the people; we who have left all the
precious and beautiful things of the world for Christ’s
sake; who have counted but dung, that we may win
Christ, all things fair to see or soothing to hear, sweet
to smell, delightful to taste, or pleasant to touch — in a
word, all bodily delights - whose devotion, pray, do we
18

“The monks withdraw themselves from the busy world...’’ (Thoronet Ak

 |
EI

ne
ies

a
 monks intend to excite by these things? What profit,
I say, do we expect therefrom? The admiration of
fools, or the oblations of the simple? Or, since we are
scattered among the nations, have we perchance learnt
-heir works and do we yet serve their graven images?
To speak plainly, doth the root of all this lie in covet-
ousness, which is idolatry; and do we seek not [spiritual]
profit, but a gift? If thou askest: “How?” I answer,
“In a strange fashion.” For money is thus artfully
scattered in order that it may multiply; it is expended
that it may give increase, and the prodigality giveth
birth to plenty; for at the very sight of these costly yet
marvellous vanities men are more kindled to offer gifts
than to pray. Thus wealth is drawn up by ropes of
wealth, thus money bringeth money; for I know not
how it is that, wheresoever more abundant wealth is
seen, there do men offer more freely. There eyes are
feasted with relics cased in gold, and their purse-
strings are loosed. They are shown a most comely
image of some saint, whom they think all the more
saintly that he is the more gaudily painted. Men run to
kiss him, and are invited to give; there is more admi-
ration for his comeliness than veneration for his sancti-
ty.... The church is resplendent in her walls, beggarly
in her poor; she clothes her stones in gold, and leaves
her sons naked. ... *

But St. Bernard’s polemics had only a limited influence

on Cluniac laxity and, at his death, the General Chapters,
the governing body of the order, had to remind certain
abbots of the statutes concerning the decoration of their
monasteries. Yet St. Bernard’s personality was such — and
his moral status so high in the Christian world — that
during his lifetime nothing was done without his approval.
It was for this reason that the great builder, Abbot Suger,
regent of France while Louis VII was on the crusade, was
forced to write two books justifying his love of splendor,
which was manifested in the Benedictine Abbey of Saint-
Denis. These books reveal some of the sentiments that
* English tranlation from G. G. Coulton, Art and the Reformation, Part ll,
The Fate of Medieval Art in the Renaissance and Reformation, New York,
Harper & Bros., 1958, Appendix 26, iv-vi

21

t Bernard (beginning of the fifteenth century)

impelled the men of this age to consecrate an important
part of their activity to construction.
In contrast to the majority of the great men of his day,
Suger was of humble origin, a fact he never bothered to
conceal. Indeed, he was quite probably of peasant stock.
At the age of eleven he was admitted to the school of
Saint-Denis-de-l’Estrée, in the shadow of the abbey, where
he was raised with sons of the French nobility and royal
princes. It was there that he began his friendship with
the future king of France. He tells us that from his
youth his great ambition was to rebuild the abbey: “I com-
pleted this [rebuilding of the abbey, save for the nave]
all the more gladly because I had wished to do it, if ever
I should have an opportunity, even while I was a pupil
in school.”
For several centuries Saint-Denis had been the royal
abbey in which the kings of France were buried. Piously
collected, there were the relics of St. Denis and his two
legendary companions, St. Rustique and St. Eleuthére,
whom Suger called his “Holy Martyrs.” Several times,
sent on missions to Rome, Suger helped strengthen the
oft-broken bonds between the papacy and the king of
France. He was there in 1121 when he learned of his
appointment as abbot of Saint-Denis. Upon his return to
France, he immediately began to lead an ostentatious life.
St. Bernard, ever concerned for the dignity of the Church,
strongly criticized the new abbot’s attitude, and Suger
accepted these remonstrances by the Clairvaux abbot,
curtailed his way of living, and undertook to reform the
abbey, which had a rather attenuated austerity.
In 1127 Bernard sent an amazing letter to Suger in
which, after having congratulated him on correcting his
way of life, he expressed his desire to have royal favor
denied to Etienne de Garlanda, a monk who had been
named seneschal. By the end of that year Etienne had
been removed from power and for the first time Bernard |
found himself in direct accord with the king. From that
moment on, despite their different temperaments, Bernard
and Suger were in agreement. Each realized that his
interests did not conflict with the other’s: one was the
official representative of the papacy, the other the most
important political personality in France.
22
 None the less, Suger’s boundless passion for richness
and splendor probably did more to popularize the taste
for luxury and decoration in the Church’s services than
Cluny ever did. To prevent another attack by St. Bernard,
he wrote:

Let every man abound in his own sense. To me, |

confess, one thing has always seemed pre-eminently
fitting: that every costlier or costliest thing should serve,
first and foremost, for the administration of the Holy
Eucharist. If golden pouring vessels, golden vials,
golden little mortars used to serve, by the word of God
or the command of the Prophet, to collect the blood
of goats or calves or the red heifer: how much more
must golden vessels, precious stones, and whatever is
most valued among all created things, be laid out, with
continual reverence and full devotion, for the reception
of the blood of Christ! Surely neither we nor our pos-
sessions suffice for this service. If, by a new creation,
our substance were re-formed from that of the holy
Cherubim and Seraphim, it would still offer an insuf-
fictent-and unworthy service for so great and so in-
effable a victim; and yet we have so great a propitiation
for our sins. The detractors also object that a saintly
mind, a pure heart, a faithful intention ought to suffice
for this sacred function; and we, too, explicitly and
especially affirm that it is these that principally matter.
[But] we profess that we must do homage also through
the outward ornaments of sacred vessels, and to nothing
in the world in an equal degree as to the service of the
Holy Sacrifice, with all inner purity and with all out-
ward splendor. *

Suger covered the main altar with gold:

We had it all encased, putting up golden panels on

either side and adding a fourth, even more precious
one; so that the whole altar would appear golden all the
way round.
* English translations of Suger’s account from Erwin Panofsky, Abbot Suger
on the Abbey Church of St.-Denis and Its Art Treasures, Princeton, Princeton
University Press, 1946.

23
wy
ne

anni nO
el
 The “Holy Martyrs,” as well as Suger, liked brightness
and splendor. Although he had proposed to set up a
modest altar before the tomb of St. Denis and his com-
os the saints themselves demanded what he should
Oo:

While we, overcome by timidity, had planned to set

up in front of this [altar] a panel golden but modest,
the Holy Martyrs themselves handed to us such a wealth
of gold and most precious gems — unexpected and
hardly to be found among kings — as though they were
telling us with their own lips: “Whether thou wantst it
or not, we want of it the best.”

Thus encouraged, Suger no longer hesitated. He

abandoned himself to the joy of acquiring the most
beautiful objects. He described the masterpieces he put
on the main altar, some of which are now preserved in
the Louvre:

And further we adapted for the service of the altar,

with the aid of gold and silver material, a porphyry
vase, made admirable by the hand of the sculptor and
polisher, after it had lain idly in a chest for many years,
converting it from a flagon into the shape of an eagle.
We also procured for the services at the aforesaid
altar a precious chalice out of one solid sardonyx....
Further we added another vase shaped like a ewer, very
similar to the former in material but not in form....
Still another vase, looking like a pint bottle of beryl or
crystal....

Thanks to this intervention by God, the monks brought

him the precious stones he needed to ornament the great
cross, twenty-one feet high — a true monument of theo-
logical science — that he placed in the choir. It was visible
from every part of the church.

One merry but notable miracle which the Lord

granted us in this connection [setting up the great
crucifix] we do not wish to pass over in silence. For
when I was in difficulty for want of gems and could
25

Saint-Denis: Suger’s choir

 not sufficiently provide myself with more (for their
scarcity makes them very expensive): then, lo and
behold, [monks] from three abbeys of two Orders — that
is, from Citeaux and another abbey of the same Order,
and from Fontevrault — entered our little chamber
adjacent to the church and offered us for sale an
abundance of gems such as we had not hoped to find
in ten years, hyacinths, sapphires, rubies, emeralds
topazes. Their owners had obtained them from Count
Thibaut for alms; and he in turn had received them,
through the hands of his brother Stephen, King of
England, from the treasures of his uncle, the late King
Henry, who had amassed them throughout his life in
wonderful vessels. We, however, freed from the worry
of searching for gems, thanked God and gave four
hundred pounds for the lot though they were worth
much mote. .
We applied to the perfection of so sacred an orna-
ment not only these but also a great and expensive
supply of other gems and large pearls. We remember,
if memory serves, to have put in about eighty marks of
refined gold. And barely within two years were we
able to have completed, through several goldsmiths
from Lorraine — at times five, at other times seven —
the pedestal adorned with the Four Evangelists; and
the pillar upon which the sacred image stands, enameled
with exquisite workmanship, and [on it] the history of
the Saviour, with the testimonies of the allegories from
the Old Testament indicated, and the capital above
looking up, with its images, to the Death of the Lord.

In order that these sacred objects be admired and vener-

ated by the faithful, the church choir had to be adequately
lighted. So Suger pulled down the somber Carolingian
basilica and raised a choir pierced with large windows
surrounding the relics, altars, and the great crucifix.
Satisfied with the happy effect thus obtained, he wrote
an inscription on the glory of light and had it engraved
in the church:

Once the new apse is joined to the old facade

The center of the sanctuary gleams in its splendor.
26
Saint-Denis, window: Suger at the feet of the Virgin

What has been splendidly united shines in splendor

And the magnificent work, inundated with a new
{light, shines,
It is I, Suger, who in my day enlarged this edifice,
Under my direction was it done.

The builders of Saint-Denis, like those who had worked

for the Cluniacs, continued to submit to the need for light
just mentioned in connection with Suger. This history of
construction is closely, linked with architects’ unceasing
efforts to allow openings in the walls without compro-
mising the solidity of their buildings. The many attempts
to make naves and choirs light were more or less success-
ful, although some of the more audacious edifices col-
lapsed. ? Architects of antiquity, of Islam, or Byzantium
27
were preoccupied with shielding their interiors from the
strong rays of the sun. Rarely before the twelfth century
had architects had to build such large buildings in regions
as far north as Burgundy and the Ile-de-France.
Incentives in addition to those mentioned above inspired
Suger’s ardent and enthusiastic reconstruction of his
abbey. If light were necessary to glorify God properly, it
was equally necessary that on feast days the greatest possi-
ble number of the faithful be able to approach the holy
relics humbly, without crowding. The choir had to be
spacious enough to permit an orderly procession of the
crowds of believers. To prove the pressing need for a
larger choir, Suger vividly described the uproar on a feast
day in the old basilica:

Often on feast days, completely filled, it [the Carolin-

gian basilica} disgorged through all its doors the excess
of the crowds as they moved in opposite directions, and
the outward pressure of the foremost ones not only
prevented those attempting to enter from entering but
also expelled those who had already entered. At times
you could see, a marvel to behold, that the crowded
multitude offered so much resistance to those who
strove to flock in to worship and kiss the holy relics,
the Nail and Crown of the Lord, that no one among
the countless thousands of people because of their very
density could move a foot; that no one, because of
their very congestion, could [do] anything but stand
like a marble statue, stay benumbed or, as a last resort,
scream. This distress of the women, however, was so
great and so intolerable that [you could see] how they,
squeezed in by the mass of strong men as in a wine-
press, exhibited bloodless faces as in imagined death;
how they cried out horribly as though in labor; how
several of them, miserably trodden underfoot [but
then], lifted by the pious assistance of men above the
heads of the crowd, marched forward as though
clinging to a pavement; and how many others, gasping
with their last breath, panted in the cloister of the
brethren to the dispair of everyone. Moreover the
brethren who were showing the tokens of the Passion
of Our Lord to the visitors had to yield to their anger
28

Issoire: a reconstruction of the ‘“‘colored splendor”

 and rioting and many a time, having no place to turn,
escaped with the relics through the windows.

It was important to place altars around the choir

so all the priests could celebrate the Mass. To meet this
requirement, Suger conceived a plan of radiating chapels
that was adopted in numerous churches during the second
half of the century.
Suger greatly strengthened the prestige of the king over
his vassals by making the royal church the most glorious
in France. He thanked God for having reserved for him
the honor of rebuilding Saint-Denis. His pride of author-
ship played no small role in his reconstruction of the
abbey, and he provided funds for a feast in his memory
in the church, an honor previously accorded only to
kings. Wishing to be remembered, he employed means
that may occasionally make us smile, but which were by
no means ineffective since he and his works are still well
known. He had himself represented four times in the
abbey, and he wrote thirteen inscriptions in his own
honor and had them engraved in stone or metal in various
parts of the church. He can be seen at the foot of Christ
in Majesty on the tympanum and at the foot of the
Virgin in one of the ambulatory windows where his name
is inscribed on the glass in letters as tall as those honoring
the Mother of God. On the facade of Saint-Denis the
inscription that recalls Suger’s role in and the date of
the consecration of the narthex can still be read:
For the splendor of the church that has fostered and
[exalted him,
Suger has labored for the splendor of the church.
Giving thee a share of what is thine, O Martyr Denis,
He prays to thee to pray that he may obtain a share
{of Paradise.
The year was the One Thousand, One Hundred,
[and Fortieth
Year of the Word when [this structure] was con-
[secrated.
On a ewer now preserved in the Louvre, he had this
verse inscribed: “Since we must offer libations to God
with gems and gold, I, Suger, offer this vase to the Lord.”
30
 And on the Justa, an Egyptian work of the fourth
century: “As a bride, Eleanor gave this vase to King
Louis, Mitadolus to her grandfather, the king to me, and
Suger to the Saints.”
Suger’s triumph as a “builder” came on the second
Sunday in June, 1144, when the choir was consecrated.
This day, for which he had prepared with all his genius
for organization, perhaps had a greater effect on archi-
tecture than any other single day in history. To conse-
crate the twenty altars at this grandiose ceremony, he
assembled the king, all the peers of the realm, archbishops
and bishops — among others, those of Sens, Senlis, Sois-
sons, Chartres, Reims, and Beauvais. Impressed by this
new abbey, each returned to his cathedral anxious to
match this extraordinary spiritual realization.
Since then the centuries have made Saint-Denis so drab
that if Suger returned he would doubtless suppose that
his abbey had become Cistercian. He would be sure that
St. Bernard’s austerity had triumphed. The gold-covered
altars, the great crucifix, bedecked with jewels, the
chalices, and all the treasures have disappeared. The
walls have been whitewashed or left bare by recent resto-
rations. The paintings and sculpture have been removed.
The choir stalls, pavement, and multicolored tapestries
have vanished. More often than not, the brilliant color
of Suger is for France only a memory. Cathedrals and
Cluniac abbeys which were conceived and built in a spirit
very similar to that of Cluny and Saint-Denis are un-
recognizable. No longer can the dual qualities of the
Christian world, symbolized by St. Bernard on the one
hand and by Suger on the other, be compared — only the
spirit of Citeaux remains. Cistercian monasteries remain
austere, still secluded from the world. Wall stones are
always unpainted, windows clear, and there is never porch,
tower, or sculpture.
Why can the medieval concept symbolized by Suger
no longer be found ir cathedrals and Cluniac abbeys?
What spiritual disasters and physical events combined to
hide a whole facet of the ascending spirit of Christianity?
Is was evidently not a triumph for St. Bernard’s austerity.
The introduction of Roman law into northern Europe at
the end of the thirteenth century led medieval society to
31
the Renaissance and modern times. This Renaissance
was the rebirth of the ideas of the ancients, and the cult
of antiquity had a catastrophic effect on medieval monu-
ments. When churches were not actually systematically
destroyed to be rebuilt according to classical concepts, as
for example the Pantheon in Paris, it was only because
frequently the considerable expenses necessary prohibited
such projects. Churches were transformed little by little
to conform to the taste of the time. The widespread
destruction during the French Revolution of 1789 was
negligible compared to the barbarous depredations of the
seventeenth and, particularly, eighteenth centuries. A list
of the ravages of the eighteenth century would fill several
volumes. And it is incredible that guides persist in
enumerating the destructions of the Revolution without
mentioning those of the eighteenth century.
Eighteenth-century Christians simply could not believe
that medieval works permitted a dignified glorification of
God. For them, only their taste and their objects were
really worthy of playing this sacred role. And so, in the
name of taste, everyone assisted in a formidable game
of destruction. The eighteenth century believed itself to
possess the grand goit; the medieval petit gout, or Gothic
taste, as it was then derisively called, merited only the
sledgehammer and ax of demolition.
At Saint-Denis, to enlarge the entrance to the church
and to facilitate the entry and departure of the royal dais
when important services took place, the trumeau of the
central portal was removed and the statue of St. Denis
destroyed. At the same time the lintels of the three
portals and the statue-column representing kings and
queens of the Old Testament which decorated the jambs
were destroyed. There was no hesitancy in ripping up
the time-honored stone tombs and the glazed tile floor in
the choir to replace them with a black and white pave-
ment. Prior Dom Malaret, responsible for these misdeeds,
had no intention of stopping while everything was going
so well. He proposed to crowd the royal tombs, then
located in the side aisles, into two chapels in the crypt
because he found them cumbersome and hideous. From
1781 to 1784, Dom Malaret hired the Italian contractor
Borani to whitewash the entire interior of the church.
32

Amiens: the grand goit’”’ of the eighteenth cent

Borani had previously very conscientiously executed this
work at Angers, Chartres and Tours.
At Notre-Dame de Paris in 1699, Mansart, famous
architect of the Place Vendédme and the dome of the
Invalides, destroyed the thirteenth-century high altar,
choir screen, stalls, and bas-reliefs which set off the choir
enclosure from the apse to set up a new high altar.
Medieval stone and copper tombs suffered the same fate.
Hemicycle columns disappeared under marble plaques
covered with gilt metal ornaments. Some years later
workers were recruited to knock out the thirteenth-cen-
tury stained glass windows to permit more light to enter
the interior. In 1752 the great thirteenth-century ambu-
latory windows shattered under hammer blows, to be
replaced by clear glass ornamented with a border of fleur-
de-lys.
In 1771 Soufflet, architect of the Pantheon, in order
to permit the royal dais to pass under the cathedral porch,
broke the Beau-Dieu which had stood majestically on the
central portal trumeau. He also removed the sculptures
of the wise and foolish virgins placed on each side of the
portal as well as those from the tympanum representing
the resurrection and St. Michael weighing souls. All
. these pieces have now been recut, but because of the
mortar joints, the original parts of the tympanum are
clearly distinguishable from the restoration. As in Saint-
Denis and many other churches of the period, the in-
terior of Notre-Dame was whitewashed.
When Louis-André de Grimaldi, a Monacan prince
and Bishop of Mans, quit that bishopric in 1777 to go to
Noyon, the Mans chapter — in recognition of the “embel-
lishments” he had brought to their cathedral - placed the
prelate’s portrait in the vestry with a eulogistic inscription
on a marble plaque dated 1778. Under his episcopate
the thirteenth-century high altar, “a confused heap of
stones and copper ornaments,” and all the nave, transept,
and side-aisle altars disappeared. With the remains of the
choir screen two altars were built in the eighteenth-cen-
tury style. The eight large hemicycle piers disappeared
under marble and stucco. Eighteen to twenty thousand
pounds of copper were sold. A contemporary antiquar-
ian, Chappotin de Saint-Laurent, tried in vain to prevent
34
the chapter from going through with this act of vanda-
lism; he could not even get permission to copy the old
inscriptions engraved on these objects. Thus this im-
mense treasure of the goldsmith’s art was lost forever.
Thirteenth-century high altars were replaced by those
in the new style. Many of them are still in the choirs
(Paris and Chartres). Choir screens were replaced by
wrought-iron grills; new chalices, monstrances, and
crosses replaced those of the Middle Ages.
The extraordinary thing about these events is that those
who perpetrated them were unquestionably inspired by
profound religious sentiment. Bishops, canons, and lay-
men sacrificed much of their personal wealth and well-
being to finance these sometimes astronomically ex-
pensive transformations. And in certain aspects, it must
be admitted that this passion for redecoration and recon-
struction recalls the enthusiasm of the twelfth- and
thirteenth-century cathedral crusade.
Disregarding these examples of destruction brought
about in the name of taste, the real question is whether
or not contemporary society, speaking of “good” and
“bad” taste with the same haughty assurance that the
eighteenth century spoke of grand goiit and petit gout,
is committing similar monumental mistakes. It is not at
all unlikely that a twentieth-century art lover, suddenly
finding himself in the twelfth century before the fagade
of Saint-Denis, where all the sculpture was painted with
strong — even violent — colors, would exclaim with horror,
‘What miserable taste!” To avoid this, twentieth-century
restorers have decided to leave the stone bare, and in so
doing have violated without the slightest misgiving the
thought of Cluny, Suger, and the cathedral builders.

35
 THE CREATIVE OUTBURST

There is no need to emphasize that the true point of

departure of the cathedral crusade is to be found in the
religious faith of the Middle Ages. Circumstances were
particularly favorable to the flowering of such archi-
tectural manifestations of piety. It goes without saying
that if the Middle Ages had not been pre-eminently a pious
age, the builders’ genius and the merchants’ money would
have been used in other ways, and there would be no
Chartres, no Amiens, no Strasbourg.... Thus, when one
insists on Suger’s pride of authorship and the vanity of
the bourgeois spirit — psychological factors as important
in their own way as the technical and economic events
to be discussed — one must not lose sight of the spiritual
background against which these characteristics were
traced.
Space limitations permit only the most cursory men-
tion of this background. Many works from the beginning
of the romantic period to the present have given richly
detailed pictures of it. Certainly, a much more precise
picture could be painted even with certain important
retouchings, but only jn a more extensive work than this,
to include a study of theology, philosophy, and various
traditional hermetic sciences, alchemy, astrology, etc.
The only specific spiritual point to be taken up here is
the increasing force of devotion to the Virgin Mary in
the Middle Ages, since this devotion had a powerful
37
The Great Architect of the Universe (fourteenth-century Bible)
effect on the construction of cathedrals. St. Bernard,
unquestionably one of the pivotal figures of medieval
Christianity, lent his influence to the development of the
Cult of the Virgin,’ celebrated at the time in beautiful
liturgical hymns:

O salutary Virgin, Star of the Sea,

Having as a child the sun of Equity,
Creator of light, O ever Virgin, accept our praise.
Queen of Heaven, through whom the sick are cured,
The devoted receive Grace, the afflicted Joy, and
The world the celestral light and hope of salvation;
Royal heart, pure Virgin, grant us thy care and thy
[protection,
Receive our wishes and by thy prayers relieve all
[pain. *

The Virgin was nowhere more honored and venerated

than at Notre-Dame de Chartres. A tradition claims that
on the site of the cathedral was a grotto where a child-
bearing virgin was secretly worshiped a century before
the birth of Christ. Some of the Virgin’s more remarkable
relics were piously preserved at Chartres, among them the
garment she wore the night Christ was born. In the fire
of 1194 this precious relic was miraculously saved, as was
her blue window - of a blue unequalled in the thirteenth
century. This masterpiece, now called Notre-Dame de
la Belle Verriére (Our Lady of the Beautiful Glass), was
installed in the choir in the thirteenth century.
At Notre-Dame de Senlis, the story of the Virgin occu-
pies the central portal. At Notre-Dame de Paris, two
portals are reserved for representations of her. At Reims,
her statue is on the trumeau of the central portal. The
Cistercians put their churches under the Virgin’s special
protection, and during the twelfth century most of the
great churches were dedicated to Our Lady —- Laon, Paris,
Amiens. 4
The enthusiasm for cathedral building began during
the second thirty years of the twelfth century: at Sens
about 1130, Noyon in 1151, in Laon in 1160, in Paris
* English translation from Coulton, op. cit.

38
Chartres: Notre Dame de la Belle Verriére
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in 1163. It reached its maximum intensity in the last
three decades of the century and the first three of the
thirteenth: Chartres in 1194, Bourges by 1195, Rouen in
1200, Mans in 1217, Reims in 1211, Amiens in 1221, and
Beauvais in 1247. This enthusiasm sustained itself for
one generation, long enough for the work on these
buildings to get well under way; then, little by little, the
passionate interest in construction fell off and, although
work continued, it was less active in the last third of the
thirteenth century and the first decades of the fourteenth.
For all practical purposes, the Hundred Years’ War,
beginning in 1337, closed the workshops, and despite
renewed efforts at the end of the war, in 1453, no French
cathedral was ever completely finished.
These great cathedrals form a crown around Notre-
Dame de Paris, running from Reims in the east to Mans
in the west, and from Laon and Amiens in the north to
Bourges in the south.> These cities in which cathedrals
were built were episcopal sees. Toward the end of the
fifth century the Church decided which Gallo-Roman
cities would become episcopal sees. Most of them were
located south of the Massif Central, in those parts of Gaul
which were then more highly developed economically
and more heavily populated than the rest of the country.
Grasse, Vence, and Antibes at that time were bishoprics,
as were such cities as Riez and Senez,, now forgotten towns
located in the Basse-Alpes, one of the most disinherited
and sparsely populated departments in France.
As the Middle Ages gained impetus, other regions of
ancient Gaul, in general, developed with the greatest
spiritual and economic vigor. During this phase of the
growth of Christianity the cities cited above were episcopal
cities without the financial means to build large cathedrals.
The word “cathedral” usually evokes the image of a great
church building, while in fact many cathedrals were very
modest undertakings. Conversely, many parish churches
in prosperous regions were ambitiously conceived and
much larger than numerous cathedrals. Here “cathe-
dral” * is used — in contradistinction to “monastic church”
— to indicate parish churches as well as cathedral churches
per se.
The history of cathedral construction and the builders
40
is directly related to the revival of free cities and com-
merce, to the birth of a middle class and the first urban
freedoms. In the early Middle Ages, urban life di-
minished, little by little, merchants disappeared, municipal
organization died. Technical knowledge that had survived
from antiquity fell into disuse; if only a few men had
carefully preserved the secret of stonecutting, it would
not have taken several centuries of groping to discover a
satisfactory new system.
Strictly speaking, there were no cities left, only forti-
fied castles. Europe became an agricultural continent in
which all wealth lay in the land. Western economy bogged
down and national income reached its lowest ebb. Then,
beginning in the tenth century, a relative peace was
established: profit-seeking vagabonds and displaced ad-
venturers began transporting goods from one corner of
Europe to the other, thus re-establishing commerce.
These men installed themselves at the confluences of
rivers or at important crossroads, and their activity
helped cities to revive. Farsighted landowners contacted
these energetic groups and encouraged them to establish
towns.
The great Belgian medievalist Henri Pirenne has been
struck by the parallel between events of the eleventh and
twelfth centuries in Europe and those of the American
Far West in the nineteenth century. Similarities between
new towns of the eleventh and twelfth centuries and pre-
planned towns designed by nineteenth-century American
businessmen to follow the development of the railroad
are striking. Both hoped to attract settlers by the most
favorable material and personal conditions. Publicity
was used to lure settlers. The charter of a newly founded
city was circulated throughout the countryside, and, just
as today, the press published the most attractive pros-
pectus on the resources, charm, and possibilities of the
“town” being formed.
There is yet another parallel to be drawn between
Europe — especially eleventh- and twelfth-century France
— and nineteenth- and twentieth-century America. It is
extremely interesting to study the curve of American
economics and psychology because it follows a develop-
ment similar to that of medieval Europe. It is both
reassuring and terrifying to see history repeating itself so
closely. Medieval economy bloomed with this freedom
of work and free competition. There was an important
increase in personal property values: joint stock com-
panies and corporate societies were established. Com-
mercial growth gave birth to money changers, bankers,
and industrialists. But the Church, opposed to the idea
of profit, was able to make these profiteers feel guilty
and obtain pardon by donating or bequeathing some of
their wealth to such pious works as church construction.
Thus a powerful means of financing cathedrals was es-
42
tablished: a man gives much more willingly when he has
amassed a large fortune.
From the first, the mode of life in these urban groups
contrasted with that of a society living solely from the
land. Laws that regulated an agarian society were unsatis-
factory controls over these commercial newcomers, who
frequently rioted with arms to set up a municipal organi-
zation and win legal and administrative automony. Out
of these riots came the first communes — legal associations
sanctioned by royal charters. The oldest commune north

e s‘
~~ *
he ae yao

Chartres, window: the money-changers

of the Alps is Cambrai, dating from 1077, and the com-
munal movement extended to other cities such as Sens,
Noyon, Laon, Rouen, Reims, Amiens, and Beauvais.
Other cities (Paris, for example) were not subject to
taxation. And all these cities built great cathedrals.
As noted above, there was a close relationship between
the commercial strength of the cities, their independence,
and ecclesiastical construction. Nearly all the cities that
gained urban independence were located on important
overland or river trade routes. In the Massif Central, a
region relatively difficult to cross, there were few com-
munes or large cathedrals. The situation was similar in
Brittany, which lay outside the important trade routes
and in which no communes or cathedrals were found in
the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.
The spirit of the medieval bourgeois played a decisive
role in the cathedral crusade because it was inspired by
a deep local patriotism. Proud of having wrested his
freedom from the feudal lord, he wanted the Church and
city to know his joy — nothing was so marvelous or so
important! The city was his, and he wanted to impress
strangers with the magnificence of his churches. A young
nation’s enthusiasm is often expressed in colossal and
immeasurable ways. It was young Egypt that built the
pyramids, works of the first dynasties. The United
States has surpassed all previous records [for tall buildings]
by building skyscrapers higher and higher. The Empire
State Building culminated this drive for height with its
102 floors, a total height of 1472 feet.
This young medieval society was symbolized by its
bourgeois. His enthusiasm permeated by a desire to break
records, he constantly raised his cathedral naves higher
and higher. In 1163, Notre-Dame de Paris began its
record construction to result in a vault 114 feet 8 inches
from the floor. Chartres surpassed Paris in 1194, eventu-
ally reaching 119 feet 9 inches. In 1212 Reims started
to rise to 124 feet 3 inches, and in 1221 Amiens reached
138 feet 9 inches. This drive to break records reached
its climax in 1247 with the project to vault the choir of
Beauvais 157 feet 3 inches above the floor — only to have
the vaults collapse in 1284.
By this time the Middle Ages was reaching maturity.
44
The middle class was becoming less dynamic, the desire
to break records burned out. When Saint-Urban de
Troyes — a glass building — was built, it was conceived in
a new spirit. Today the United States is in the same
situation. The industrial middle class, although unwilling
to admit it, is lethargic. A new nation’s desire to set
records no longer interests it. The celebrated Lever
Building, constructed on New York’s Park Avenue in
1953, is a glass structure, but only thirty stories high. It
symbolizes a turning point in the American psychology.
Bourgeois civic pride, the desire to conquer new worlds,
and merchants’ vexed souls all contributed to the success
of the cathedral crusade. But there were other factors
that contributed to the financing of these edifices. From
the middle of the twelfth century, the idea of going to
the Holy Land was no longer as popular as it has been
earlier. Why? Because Jerusalem had been in Christian
hands since 1099? Because no one realized the constant
menace the Moslems presented to France? Because
everyone remembered the difficulties of the First Cru-
sade? Because the taste for luxury and riches began to
spread? The Church always authorized those in charge of
the fabric to grant indulgences to anyone helping to build
God’s House. It was no longer necessary to go on a
crusade to atone for sins. The cathedral crusade took
form, and the entire ecclesiastical hierarchy from Pope
to simple parish priest contributed to it spiritually and
financially.
Following the disasters of the poorly organized expe-
ditions of 1147, 1187, and 1204, crusades to defend or
recapture Christ’s Tomb became an idea of the past. The
difficulties that confronted St. Louis when he tried to
organize his army in the mid-thirteenth century are
characteristic of the spiritual state of the time. In might
be said that the cathedral crusade contributed to the
weakening of the French kingdom.
Contrary to what is-generally believed, the cathedral
crusade met resistance of its own. Pious, influential men
were scandalized by such extensive undertakings. Petrus
Cantor, one of the high dignitaries of Notre-Dame de
Paris, wrote vehemently in 1180: “...This lust for
building is testified to by the palaces of princes, erected
45
from the tears and the money wrung from the poor.”
He compared it to a disease, a raging epidemic: “But
monastic or ecclesiastical edifices are raised from the
usury and breed of barren metal among covetous men,
from the lying deceits and deceitful lies of hireling
preachers.” * Petrus had little of the effect on cathedral
construction that St. Bernard had on the luxury of Cluny
and Saint-Denis, and although his denouncement may
have been prompted by wisdom, it had little effect on the
ardor and emotion that activated the workshops.
God’s House was the earthly image of the Heavenly
Jerusalem, and it was a beautiful thing: it was the house
of adoration, the house of the people. In most ancient
religions, the people did not have access to the sanctuary. -
But the Christian church, by contrast, demanded that her
faithful contribute to the construction of churches large
enough for the populace to have access. Ecclesiastical
law emphasized the difference between the sanctuary and
the remaining area of the cathedral. During the Middle
Ages, Notre-Dame de Paris belonged not to the bishop,
but to the chapter whose jurisdiction ended at the sanctu-
ary, which was reserved for the bishop, as was true for
all cathedral sanctuaries. Naves and side aisles were
reserved especially for worshipers, that is, for the people.7
This distinction is important because, otherwise, the
twentieth-century spirit is likely to be offended by the
worldly activities that went on inside these medieval
churches. People slept, ate, talked openly, and brought
animals — dogs and falcons — inside. Circulation was
much freer than now because there were no chairs. Often
the most secular matters were discussed inside the
churches. Communal representatives met in the cathedral
to discuss city business, and it has been noted that in some
of the communes with large cathedrals the burghers did
not even build a city hall. There is at least one text
forbidding a commune to use the cathedral as a meeting
hall, proof enough that it was a common occurrence. It
was evidently not a right in itself, but simply tolerated
by the Church. At Marseille, meetings of the guild
masters, councils, and business leaders were regularly
held in the Church of the Major. Presumably, communal
* English translation from Coulton, op. cit.

46
 representatives helped finance the city cathedral with the
idea of holding their meetings there. If this supposition
is disturbing it must be remembered that these men lived
in daily contact with the divinity. They were probably
much less intimidated by the Lord than the modern
Christian who encounters God at best every Sunday
morning in his parish church.
Following this line of thought, account must be taken
of professional organizations who did not consider it dis-
respectful to make announcements in the Cathedral of
Chartres. Examining the church closely, it becomes
evident that the guilds obtained the best possible place-
ment for their windows. They are installed along the side
aisles or in the ambulatory nearest the public, while
glass donated by bishops and lords was relegated to the
clerestory windows of the nave and choir. The cloth
merchant, the stonecutter, the wheelwright, and the
carpenter each had himself depicted in a medallion in
the lower part of the window donated by his guild, as
close as possible, as it were, to future clients.
Numerous feasts increased the contact between God
and medieval man, explaining in part the latter’s passion
for enlarging and beautifying his church. Never has a
civilization offered so many holidays to its peasants and
workers. In February, 1956, France voted three weeks
of annual vacation plus ten legal feast days for every
citizen, and in so doing became the world’s first country
to give its citizens anything approximating that granted
by the Church in the Middle Ages. It should be re-
membered that in former times the working day was
much longer than today. Frequently it began at dawn
and ended at sundown. The number of annual feasts
varied according to the year and town in question. In
fifty-two weeks, there was an average of thirty feast days,
noted in workshop accounts. In the accounts of the
Cistercian abbey at Vale Royal, England, in 1280, twenty-
nine feast days are specified. Idle days brought no pay
in the Middle Ages, although today employers are legally
bound to give pay on some feast days.
The working population quit work at noon on Satur-
days and all feast days. Adding all these half-days to
feast days, it would seem that the medieval laborer
47
Chartres, window: stonecutters

averaged only a five-day week. This is proved by the

detailed account of the workshop at the Augustinian
convent in Paris in 1299. Workers, hired by the day,
were generally paid for five days per week, never more
and occasionally less:
48
 Expenditures for the second week of August:
To Master Robert for 5 days . . . 10s.
To 3 masons, each for 5 days . . . 29s. 2d.
To 5 assistants, each for 5 days. . . 24s. 7d.
Expenditures for the third week of August:
To Master Robert for 5 days . . . 10s.
Expenditures for the fourth week of August:
To Master Robert for 4 days . . . 8s.
To Jean de Saint-Quentin, to Girart de
Van..., to Guillaume, stonecutters,
each for 4 days at 2 sous per day. . 24s.
Expenditures for the second week of September:
To Master Robert for 5 days . . . 10s.
To 2 assistants and a scaffolder, each
naa CORA RP LO, NE es PSge LOR

This account eloquently proves that the medieval

working population was not overburdened with work.
Indeed, it ought to be envied rather than pitied, for its
leisure was magnificently organized by the authorities
and absolutely free. It is not unlikely that the medieval
laborer’s leisure had a considerable influence on the ca-
thedral crusade and the work of enlarging the churches.
The Church masterfully organized ceremonies and
processions. One can only try to imagine the splendor
of medieval religious feasts. Probably only the services
in St. Peter’s in Rome adequately recall those of the
past. On important feast days, ecclesiastical authorities
concentrated their efforts on ceremonies in the cathedral,
to the detriment of those taking place in parish churches.
The congregations from various parishes usually wanted
to attend the services in the cathedral. This is analogous
to the situation today when it is announced that an inter-
national soccer match is to be played in a city’s largest
stadium. On the big day, the population rushes to the game
en masse, abandoning local stadiums in which matches of
only sectional importance are being played. Thus those
stadiums scheduling international matches must be as
large as possible. For comparable reasons — mutatis
mutandis — the medieval cathedral had to be sufficiently
large to accommodate crowds coming from every part
of the city. Faced with an influx of the faithful, authori-
49
ties were constantly pressed to enlarge their cathedrals.
The area of some was ‘increased to handle a larger
number of worshipers than the total inhabitants of the
city, space being opened for peasants from neighboring
parish churches.
When the bourgeois and his wife left their small
house — their windows and doors locked — and set out
slowly through the narrow, tortuous streets to the feast,
the cathedral towers and spires seen over the city roofs
seemed to him much taller and attenuated than to us
today. The area of the city was limited by surrounding
fortifications, and the land inside the boundary in great
demand and expensive. For this reason houses were built
right up to the cathedral walls. There was hardly any
open area, and in the Middle Ages a cathedral could
never be admired from a distance as it can be today.
The frame constituted by old houses has most often been
destroyed. Notre-Dame de Paris has the most dispro-
portionate square of all. Napoleon III, fearing that in
the event of a future revolution rioters could easily
barricade themselves in the narrow Cité streets, had that
part of the island razed. The loss of this old topography
is regrettable, but it is fortunate that we can now examine
the cathedral without having to contend with the noise
and disorder of the immense workshop. Much to his
sorrow, the medieval bourgeois never saw his cathedral
completed. He could only hope that some day his son
would see the end of that eternal chaos in the workshop.
All the guilds worked in an area surrounded by carts
carrying construction materials; there were sculptors,
stonecutters, masons, plasterers, roofers, scaffolders,
smiths, overseers, plumbers, painters, and artisans of
many other crafts. The scaffolding attached to the wall
always hid a part of the building.
The bourgeois, watching this spectacular activity, had
the satisfaction of judiciously controlling the funds he
had provided. He was doubtless thus encouraged to be
even more generous when extra funds were needed.
What seventeenth-century bourgeois would have given a
part of his wealth to an absolute monarch?
The curious or devout passer-by, approaching the
portal, enjoyed recognizing sculptured figures of Old and
50
 New Testament characters close to his heart and soul.
The thing that made the Middle Ages moving and ami-
cable was this: the lettered and the ignorant had the same
book of images, and they received the same education,
the only difference being one of degree. Several centuries
later it was different. The educated man of the Renais-
sance, in cultivating antiquity to excess, had mythological
scenes painted and sculpted that were simply incom-
prehensible to the general public. The introduction of
the humanities abruptly separated the masses from men
of learning - a situation that to this day has not been
completely rectified in western Europe.
Advancing into the church, the bourgeois found other
familiar scenes. Until about the middle of the twelfth
century, the book of images opened itself on frescoed
walls and vaults, as in Saint-Savin, for example. Then,
little by little, windows became larger as wall space con-
tracted, providing light but limiting the opportunity to
paint large frescoes. After that time, the book of images
was inscribed in the beautiful stained glass windows.
Under the cathedral vaults — another aspect of medi-
eval harmony - men of all social conditions met side by
side. The bourgeois found the peasant as well as the

Saint-Savin, fresco: construction of the Tower of Babel

bishop, the nobleman, and even the king. The great men
of the realm came to pray in the cathedral and gave
generously for its munificence. The era was yet to come
when the wealthy faithful would consecrate their money
to the construction of luxurious private chapels, even
though a number existed in the thirteenth century and
the tradition of private chapels can be traced to the late
eighth century.
This union of both religious and secular classes under
the aegis of the Church could be found solemnly ex-
pressed in plain sight, engraved in a circular plaque
imbedded in the labyrinth of the nave. On this were
Chartres; the labyrinth
found the names and portraits of those responsible for
building the church.
Beside the portrait of the bishop those of the architects
were incised. These labyrinths were thought to represent
the pilgrimage route in the Holy Land, and this symbolic
relationship was so strong in the belief of the time that
a trip over the maze carried with it the same grace and
indulgences as a pilgrimage itself. This seems curious
perhaps, and gives an unexpected importance to the
builders, but it must not be forgotten that ideas borrowed
from the vocabulary of architecture have always held a
high place in Christian symbolism - for example, the
evangelical term “cornerstone” and the title, Pontifix
Maximus, taken from the Romans (pontifix being a bridge
builder).
Only one of these labyrinths is extant today, that at
Chartres (59 feet in diameter). The origin of this type
of design must perhaps be sought in Cretan civilization,
or, possibly, it was introduced into western Europe by
megalithic society, for there is in the entrance to the
Dublin Museum a magnificent megalithic labyrinth in-
cised in stone. Piously, on their knees, the faithful
followed the maze to reach the center of the labyrinth
where the symbolic plaque was located. None of these
plaques remain today, but the inscriptions on two of
them are known - those of Amiens and Reims. The
former reads:
In the year of Grace 1220, the work on this church
was begun. The bishop of this diocese was at that time
Evrard; the king of France, Louis [VIII], son of Philip
Augustus. The master of works was named Master
Robert de Luzarches, after him came Thomas de
Cormont, and, after the latter, his son Renaud who
had this inscription made in the year of the Incar-
nation 1288.
The portraits of the bishop and the three architects
were incised in white marble. The highest dignitaries of
the Church and great feudal lords, as well as the peasant
and bourgeois, having covered the maze on their knees,
saw the names and faces of these men of genius, and
often of humble origin, who had dared conceive this
53
 Church at Romsey, England:

extraordinary architecture. What higher honor could

have been paid the cathedral builders? Today’s architects
and planners are far from having such glory. These
plaques constitute a weighty argument against the thesis
54
the builders and their honor

of the anonymity of the medieval architect. The honor

of having his name inscribed in God’s House inspired
him to do great things, demonstrating the wisdom of the
Church in authorizing these inscriptions. :
55
 THE CANON-BUILDERS

Cathedral construction cannot be understood without

knowledge of the singularly important role of the ca-
thedral chapters. Stories have come down about the deeds
of various bishops in elaborating the plans and financing
of the great enterprise, undertakings that are unquestion-
ably true. Indeed, many cathedrals owe much recognition
to their bishops: Notre-Dame de Paris must be associated
with Maurice de Sully and his efforts on its behalf, Senlis
owes much to Thibaut, and Amiens much to Evrard. It
is only a legend that bishops did not play an essential
role in the development of their cathedrals. But the
bishop was only a star who burned brightly and then
disappeared from the scene, while cathedral construction
programs continued from one generation to another.
Under whose care? Who maintained a cathedral? It was
the chapter. Moreover, medieval cathedrals belonged
more often to the chapters than to the bishops. Hugues
de Bourgogne donated land on which to build the ca-
thedral at Autun not to the bishop but to the chapter.
The meaning of this word “chapter” must be clarified
first, because it no longer has the meaning it did in the
Middle Ages. Since the French Revolution, the role of
the chapter has been much more honorary than active,
but in medieval times the chapter was an assembly of
canons who enjoyed great privileges and who were
frequently outside episcopal jurisdiction. Only at the
Council of Trent in the sixteenth century was its relation-
ship to the bishop defined. Canons were the true ca-
57

Haggada, thirteenth century

thedral builders, and they must be brought out of ob-
scurity and given their due honor, for it was they who
directed the cathedral crusade and who sustained work
through the centuries, often from their own revenue
when public enthusiasm had long been dead.
What was the historical origin of the chapter? And
how was this assembly able to take such a place in the
temporal direction of the Church? In the early Middle
Ages each bishop had under him a body of priests who
assisted him in administrating his diocese and saying
Mass in its parishes. It was in regulating his priests’ lives
that Bishop Chrodegang of Metz (742-766) instituted
canonical law. His canons — in a certain sense his privy
council — were forced into a communal life, to live under
his canonical rules. Henceforth they slept in dormitories,
had a common refectory, and celebrated their offices as
a community.
At Aix-la-Chapelle in 817, Louis the Pious, having
made certain that the canons would take vows of obedi-
ence and chastity, practically annulled the vow of
poverty. This was to have important consequences.
Canons legally had life tenure on their lodgings and
could dispose of their movable property by bequest. This
decision gradually led canons to break with their commu-
nal existence and return to a more secular and individu-
alistic life.
Beginning in the first half of the tenth century, several
cathedral chapters had their revenues separated from
those of the bishops. From then on, chapter inde-
pendence grew. Chapters now dispensed with a common
treasury and each canon was given a prebend, that is, a
more or less important ecclesiastical revenue. Prebends
did not oblige the canons to live in the cathedral city,
and some were even able to control several prebends
located in other dioceses. In short, there were resident
and nonresident canons. The establishment of a dean at
the head of the chapter resulted in further freedom from
episcopal control. The chapter included a certain number
of officers: a chancellor who acted as secretary and who
was responsible for the seals, a’ treasurer in charge of the
treasury and relics, and a cantor who was the choirmaster
and who directed the chant and organized the religious
58
 services. Following the ceremoniale episcoporum, canons:
ig took precendent over mitered priests.
As cities grew and the population increased, more
canons were appointed. Commercial developments and
improved agricultural methods increased prebend values
which in turn increased the power of the chapters.
Canons gradually increased their rights and privileges,
becoming jealous of their authority and even anxious to
limit the bishop’s power. Legal disputes became increas-
ingly frequent and were generally settled in favor of these
powerful assemblies, as for example at Notre-Dame de
Paris in 1335. The bishop himself was forced to concede
in an act of November 5, that the dean, the chapter, and
each of the individual canons, “members of the choir
of Notre-Dame and all their domestics” were exempt from
his jurisdiction and should denounce his lawyers or
counselors if they said otherwise.
In all cathedrals the chapter controlled the fabric. In
the Middle Ages, “fabric” was understood to mean every-
thing pertaining to the construction or maintenance of
the cathedral, both in its physical execution and in the
acquisition and administration of the funds affected by it.
The bishop seems rarely to have been consulted or to
have taken any responsibility in the fabric. When he did,
it was with full willingness and an exceptional honor.
In developing plans and seeing to their execution, the
chapter played a part comparable to that of the modern
city planning commission. The same order of problems
had to be solved: expropriation, financing, contracts, all
of which presented difficulties similar to those involved
in any large project today. Then as now, individual
interests opposed general goals and complicated the job
from the outset. Expropriation always occasioned bitter
fights. The builders of Amiens Cathedral in the thirteenth
century were prevented from working by the obstinacy of
a religious community. Between 1230 and 1240 brothers
of the hospital at Amiens simply could not (or were
unwilling to) understand that the city wanted to enlarge
its cathedral at the expense of the neighboring hospital.
Their ill will made it necessary, in order to obtain their
permission, to pay large indemnities over and above
rebuilding their hospital near a large waterway at the
chapter’s expense. They were paid one hundred livres
a year for five years and an impartial four-man com-
mission was set up to determine the cost of dismantling
the hospital. Measures also had to be taken to prevent
strong arguments between those brothers who were willing
to move and those determined to stay. The latter were
continually begged to concede to the wishes of the city’s
clergy and people. Today’s expropriated villagers are not
unlike these thirteenth-century ecclesiastics.
Canons were to meet at the beginning of each year to
select a master, a person whose task was to keep the
fabric accounts and to oversee the workshop. The master
might be a canon or a priest or, very rarely, a lay agent
responsible to the chapter, chosen for his knowledge of
architecture and his business sense. Chance has preserved
the detailed account of the fabric at Autun for the year
1294-1295, a simple record worth a thousand literary
documents because it reveals an infinity of facts con-
cerning thirteenth-century cathedral workshop activity.
Quicherat studied this marvelous piece of bookkeeping
in the nineteenth century, but since then little thought
has been given to it. Here, translated from the Latin for
the first time, is this unknown but amazing record of
thirteenth-century life. Robert Clavel himself tells us that
he was master of Autun Cathedral for the year 1294-1295:

In the year 1295, the Friday after the Octave of

Pentecost, Robert Clavel, clerk, master of the chapter
of the Church of Saint-Lazare, made account of all
expenses and receipts, expenses on behalf of the fore-
60
named chapter since the Monday after the Octave of
Pentecost of the year 1294, to Sunday in the Octave
of Pentecost in this said year 1295, deduction of 12
livres 11 deniers being made as payment. Without
forgetting to deduct the advance received in view of
these expenses, it remains that the chapter of Autun
owes this said Robert 53 Vienne livres 6 sous 3 deniers,
the sum that this said Robert owed to the chapter of
Autun according to the count made this Monday.
61
 Quicherat analyzed these Clavel accounts and de-
termined that they fall into seven catagories: (1) assess-
ments on the chapter at Autun; (2) revenues from vacant
benefices in the city and diocese that by papal permission
could be devoted to the cathedral fabric; (3) receipts of
indulgences granted to benefactors of the fabric; (4)
receipts of the quest by the confraternity of Saint-Lazare
during Pentecost; (5) receipts of surplus revenues: the
chapter took in benefices not devoted to the fabric, which
amounted to 34 livres 19 sous 5 deniers. There were
several bequests by individuals from other places, among
them a lady from Cluny, but donors generally belonged
to the diocese of Autun and were peasants save one,
Master Humbertus de Virgultis, whose name indicates
that he was a clerk. The curates of Buxy and Saffres
brought in 5 sous 9 deniers and 14 sous from renting
plows in their parishes, and the village of Marcheseul,
which belonged to the chapter, furnished 12 sous 2 de-
niers; (6) receipts from alms-boxes set up especially to
benefit the fabric — one at the home of Isabelle Raclete,
at the curate’s of Autun, at Martinet the draper, at
Grimoard’s, at Robin the goldsmith and boxmaker, at
Gilles Gododin’s in Saint-Pancrace of Autun, at Saint-
Jean de la Crotte, and in the church at Bligny - in all,
10 livres 17 sous 2 deniers; (7) the chapter deduction
totaling 42 livres 13 sous 3 deniers which had been sub-
tracted from the donations to the Autun Cathedral from
Pentecost 1294 to Pentecost 1295. The total of the stated
accounts received before the last article came to 400
livres 9 sous 9 deniers.
These were the expenditures:

In the quarries, for extracting

stones intended for the upkeep of
the Church of Saint-Lazare. . . 81. 10s. 4d.
To the same [places] for the
Yours tee S35) era ta Ge t amen Fees
For cutting and _ transporting
wood for centering at the Church
of Saint-Lazare, and for carpenters
SNE HADOLEESA: aioe tresses sel! dof Gael doline cabeek ae
62
 To the vga at Autun, for the
year 5
To the Teo: at thd quarry, 2
sous, including our iron . :
To laborers for eee this said
quarry
For study of the quarry site at
Marmontain . » dal
To laborers who nileonwf roof
tiles at the Church of Saint-Lazare
For poles used rigei
For making and hia 12
wagons with iron P 11.
To carpenters for wood cut in the
chapter’s forest . j 81.
For repairing the roof of the
Church of Saint-Lazare and em-
placement of the machines required,
for carpenters and laborers . Silke
To carpenters who sheeted the
Church of Saint-Lazare 101.
To buy the sheeting . 3s. 6 d.
 WG LUG

For the nails and other iron

pieces required for the construction
of the sanctuary of the Church of
Saint-Lazare . 16s. 8d.
To Master Pierre de Dijon, tiler . 701.
To this said Pierre 12 livres were
paid in the preceding account .
Expenses incurred in transporting
the stones known as “gargoyles” 41. 10s. 9d.
To Renaud, tavern-keeper, for
rent of. the house in which this
present master [Pierre] lives, for two
terms of the present year . 31.
For clothing for this said master,
the quarter’s rent of the Nativity of
St. John the Baptist not included . 101.
For iron pegs, iron-bound grind-
ing wheels, and iron itself 18s. 3d.
For making the roofers’ hammers ls. 10d.
To the harness-maker Benoit for
yokes, collars, halters, and other
leather articles ews for the
wagon 21. 10s.
For hay, and Pie ioe vere re-
quired for the wagon . user 191. 17s. 4d.
64
 For oats 251. 3s. “9d.
For horseshoes 41. 6s.
For the nails and iron used to
strengthen the new AES and
repair the old 61.
To the wheelwright for dic year,
for the new wagons and ie of
the old . MTS LoR 21. 14s.
For axle grease, oil, vinegar, and
30 pound of candles, for the year . Zt.
Rent, charges, and ede of a
wagon 181.
For the rent of carriages, stables,
and a loft. 2A;
For rope : 13 d.
For care of a horse . Sis;
To buy a horse for the wagon . pe 10s.
 A master like Robert Clavel — in addition to providing
the workshop with first-class workers and manufactured
products — had to direct the transport of materials, over-
see the workers, assure the continuance of all religious
services despite the work, and organize the maintenance
of completed buildings.
In 1295 Clavel succeeded in balancing his budget, but
often workshop expenses exceeded chapter revenues.
Incoming funds were insufficient to cover the cost of the
materials used and to pay the workers, who would then
leave that city to find work in another shop. In such
situations canons busied themselves finding new resources
to resume work. Their success proved them the equals
of modern ministers of finance with their unbalanced
national budgets. They addressed themselves to con-
fessors, instructing them to remind their faithful that
dishonestly gained goods must be turned over to the
fabric. They incited the young religious confraternities
established to assist in aiding the fabric — such as that at
Saint-Lazare at Autun - to a more energetic effort in
organizing their collections. Clerics who arrived later for
religious services were fined. From the pulpit orators
expounded the spiritual gifts to be accorded benefactors
of the cathedral:
Noble and kind gentlemen [said an orator of Amiens
in 1260], you can be twenty-seven days closer to Para-
dise than you were yesterday if sin, envy, and lust do
not cost you this indulgence and, moreover, with it
you can draw near again to the souls of your fathers,
mothers, and all those whom you love best.
In addition to all this, chapters decided that anyone
desiring to be buried within the walls of the church would
have to pay for the privilege. Finally, when the need
was acute, canons taxed themselves heavily. And, too,
bishops often contributed considerable funds to the fabric
in difficult times.
One of the most efficient means of collecting funds
was the public exhibition of relics. Fortunate indeed
were the churches with important and celebrated relics.
At Laon, in 1112, three months after a fire had ravaged
the cathedral, seven canons and several layman left the
66

Recovery of a child before coffer containing the relics

of Saint Louis (beginning of the fifteenth century)
 ol

ee ‘gi tN

GED
city with the relics saved from the fire — a piece of the
Virgin’s veil, a fragment of the Holy Sponge, and a part
of the True Cross — to visit Issoudun, Tours, Angers, Le
Mans, and Chartres. They returned in the fall with funds
they hoped to be sufficient for reconstructing their ca-
thedral; but these funds were quickly drained away, and
by the spring of 1113 it was decided to organize a second
tour, this time to England. Going through Arras and
Saint-Omer, the canons embarked for England at Wissant.
Their crossing was by no means easy, for these pious
voyagers were robbed by Flemish merchants and attacked
by pirates. Yet they arrived safely in Dover and visited
Canterbury, Winchester, Salisbury, and Exeter. They
returned at the end of September with sufficient funds
for their cathedral to be consecrated on August 29, 1114.
But the cult of relics led to abuses. Some relics of very
doubtful authenticity were exhibited. In the face of these
excesses the Church showed its concern at the Lateran
Council in 1215 by forbidding veneration of any object
without express permission. After this date the adoration
of relics faltered in intensity, and in the Autun accounts,
for example, no further mention of funds raised in this
manner is made. However, abuses continued: in the
fabliaux and, later, in Boccaccio, sharp indignation is
expressed against certain clerical stratagems which could
not always be readily differentiated from pure and simple
swindling. This indignation, becoming an open revolt,
would one day become one of the causes of the Refor-
mation.

69
Apocalypse (late thirteenth century)
 In the hierarchy of cathedral builders, the laborer was
evidently at the bottom of the scale, but every opportunity
was open to him to advance himself as long as the as-
cendant period of the Middle Ages lasted. With hard
work and intelligence he could become a specialist. He
might save a little money and establish himself as a con-
tractor or, by studying, train himself to take up the duties
of an architect. Medieval society allowed the most humble
men to reach high positions. The future belonged to the
ambitious. The evolution of the medieval working world
presents a certain analogy to that in America. All things
being equal, the medieval laborer could become a self-
made man and assume an estimable position in his city.
These laborers were recruited from the uprooted “class.”
They were often serfs who had fled from their masters,
seeking refuge in cities far from their native regions. If
they were not reclaimed by their masters within a year
and a day, they became free and citizens of the city.
Laborers were also probably recruited from the peasant-
ry, the sons of large families seeking adventure and
freedom in the city. They were all able to find jobs
immediately in one of the many city workshops. Workers
in these workshops were freemen.
Various tasks were demanded of laborers. The Autun
accounts show that they assisted carpenters in transporting
timber, excavated to open a quarry, and: carried slate for
the roof of Saint-Lazare. The accounts of the Monastery
71
e {

Cutter’s tools for hard stone

of the Brothers of St. Augustine in Paris show them
performing other tasks. They dug foundations. Frequent
indications of this nature are found: “For removing earth
in order to begin the foundations. To Gautier, for re-
moving the earth of the sacristy foundations. To Gautier,
for cleaning out the foundations.” In the workshops they
carried ‘various materials in baskets on their backs, as
these extracts show: “For two basket-carriers, three days
each ... 3 sous 6 deniers. For seven basket-carriers, five
days each ... 20 sous 5 deniers.” Their daily salary was
about seven deniers; workers qualified as plasterers and
cementers earned from ten or eleven deniers, and special-
ists such as masons and stonecutters received about
twenty or twenty-two deniers. Laborers’ living conditions
must therefore have been rather severe, primarily because
work was irregular and salaries low.
It is difficult to reconcile the presence of these laborers
in the workshops with the legend about volunteer labor,
an episodic phenomenon which could have held only a
negligible place in construction. Free work literally took
bread out of the mouths of laborers in search of work.
The only work unskilled laborers might perform was
to carry materials or dig foundations, and they must have
taken a dim view of those who offered to work for nothing.
The chanson de geste of the four Aymon sons tells the
legendary story of a nobleman, Renaud de Montauban,
who, to atone for his sins, joined a workshop where he
accepted only a pittance. After a week the regular workers
became concerned about this man who was causing their
wages to be lowered. They decided to do away with him
and, attacking him from behind, beat him to death with
axes and threw his body in the Rhine. But their crime
did not go unpunished. Happily, the fish gathered
together and lifted his body which floated with the
current, lighted by three candles. This story symbolized
the workers’ hostility to unremunerated work by the
zealous and the faithful.
Specialists and professionals attached to themselves a
number of laborers to assist them in their tasks, the latter
being called variously aides, servants, companions, or
valets. The Autun accounts studied in the preceding
chapter provide information about this:
72
Construction of the Tower of Babel (thirteenth century)
 For 5 stonecutters 2 livres 10 sous
For 4 servants. 19 sous
To 3 masons and
2 servants. . . 1 livre 8 deniers
To 3 masons, 5
days each. . . 1livre 9sous 2 deniers
For 5 aides, 5
days each. . . 1livre 4sous 7 deniers

It should be noted that the terms used to

designate various types of workers cannot be
strictly followed, because the precise definition
of words, as of numbers, was not as important
as it is today.
Stonecutters used workers to bring them stone
and assist in their work, and masons used
laborers to. prepare mortar, cement, or plaster
for them. Again, substantiation comes from the
Autun accounts: “To 2 aides for the cementer,
4 days each ... 8 sous. For 4 valets for carry-
ing sand and making cement, 3 days each...
7 sous 4 deniers.”
It is the masons themselves who would have
taught their aides and valets the composition
and proportion of the various elements that
went into the preparation of mortar and plaster.
Certain workers specialized in mixing mortar
and plaster and came to be known as mortar-
men, cementers, and plasterers. But in the
middle of the thirteenth century guild masters
were very much concerned with the ethical and
professional qualifications of la-
borers who rose to such relative
specialization. About 1268 Etien-
ne Boileau, provost of guilds,
called a meeting (perhaps on the
advice of Louis IX) of all guild
masters at Chatelet to ask them
to dictate the “uses and customs”
of their trades. Boileau listed 101 professions. The forty-
eighth statute, which is of interest here, was that of
“masons, stonecutters, plasterers, and cementers,” and
was dictated by Guillaume de Saint-Patu, the king’s
master mason. The king gave his favorite architect
mastership over the guild:
The king orders, as God has given him good life,
that the master Guillaume de Saint-Patu is given
mastership over the masons as it pleases him. The
said master Guillaume will stay in Paris in the palace
lodge and he will protect the above-mentioned trade
faithfully and loyally as best he can, for the poor as
for the rich and for the weak as for the strong, so
long as it pleases the king for him to watch over the
above-said trade. And then that master Guillaume
took the foresaid oath before the provost of Paris at
ChAatelet.
The guild master took advantage of this occasion to
insure his own rights: “The master who protects the
guild for the king is absolved from night-watch because
of the service he renders in protecting the guild.”
In the sixth paragraph we read that the guild master
alone had the right to have two apprentices rather than
one. This statute, like the others in the Book of the
Guilds, opposed fraud and sought to guarantee a high
quality in construction:
If the plasterers send plaster to begin the work of
any man, the mason who works for the latter to whom
the plaster is sent must swear by his oath that the
quality of the plaster is good and true and if he has
any suspicions or doubts about the measure, he must
weigh the plaster or have it weighed before him and
if he finds that the measure is not true, the plasterer
must pay 5 sous in amends. To wit, 2 sous to the
Chapel of Saint-Blaise, 2 sous to the master who pro-
tects the guild, and 1 sou to him who will have
weighed the plaster.
The guild master did not forget himself. In the follow-
ing paragraph it is clear that the plasterer alone had to
pay for his admission into the guild in Paris:
74
 No one may be a plasterer in Paris unless he pays
5 Parisian sous to the master who protects the pro-
fession for the king. When he has paid the five sous
he must swear by the saints that he will put nothing in
the plaster save lime and that he will give a good and
true measure.

Paragraph fourteen forewarns the plasterer that on the

second offense an appeal will be made to the provost
who will act accordingly:
If the plasterer puts anything else in his plaster than
what he should, he must pay 5 sous in amends, he must
pay the master for each time that this is done. If the
plasterer habitually does this and is unwilling to amend
his ways, the master can forbid him use of the guild and
if the plasterer does not wish to leave the guild, the
master must make it known to the provost of Paris and
the provost must make that plasterer foreswear the
aforesaid guild.
The use of force and police intervention is taken up
in paragraph twenty: “... the master will make it known
to the provost of Paris and the provost of Paris will
combat it with force.”
The cathedral builders paid taxes, and interesting infor-
mation concerning them may be drawn from the thir-
teenth-century Paris municipal tax régisters. For the year
1292 there are the names and the sums paid by 15,200
contributors subject to the taille, parish by parish and
street by street. The taille was an imposition levied on
persons who were neither nobles nor ecclesiastics, or
those who did not enjoy some special exemption. The
largest entry that year was that from Gandoufle le
Lombard for 114 livres 10 sous, and the smallest was
that from the “little people,” the lowest economic class,
for 12 deniers. The roll is strewn with errors in addition
that a ten-year-old child would not make today. And
yet no one can be accused of fraud since the errors are
sometimes for too much and sometimes for too little.
This lack of precision, which seems to characterize medi-
eval man and which showed up in his construction, seems
offensive to our modern devotion to minutiae, graphs,
75
and statistics. But this lack of accuracy was greatly
compensated for by the spirit of synthesis which animated
the epoch. Modern man analyzes and specializes — and
the consequences of using this mode of thinking exclu-
sively are beginning to be felt.
Again the document as proof:
The “little people” outside the Porte Saint-Honoré
and the parish of Saint-Germain each paid 1 sou.
Guillaume de Laingny, hd Soe fad Fe lesa
Auberi, carpenter. . . Me chi Rig te ceCOL!
Guillaume, shoemaker . .. . . . . Ilsou
Jehan" Pasquier mason =. Se e Ou
Robért? thatcher™’ 282 2%," Fae Se aieso
Symon} ''glassblower® “0%! 2°07" (2 eh oe iisou
Raoul, tapestty-maker °°) ee" Oe soe
etc.
To find the total taxes paid by these “little people,”
one had only to count the number of individuals taxed.
Yet the result given in the manuscript shows a mistake
in addition of 1 livre 19 sous. The manuscript total is
14 livres 4 sous, but Géraud, who studied the document
in the nineteenth century, could find only 12 livres
5 sous.
In the register 192 persons connected with the work
of stonecutting are listed, divided into the following cate-
gories: 104 masons, 12 stonecutters, 36 plasterers, 8
mortarmen, 2 dressers, 18 quarrymen, 7 assistant masons,
3 overseers, 2 roadmakers.
The assignment of taxes paid by plasterers was great,
ranging from 12 deniers to 4 livres 12 sous.
Raoul:paidic:; ick a4. Uiee..deen ania teow
Syihon: paid Cpe wath 01. ar Pe Soe. bas
Y¥sebel-plasteren: Sit “lecea sci’ i cao is. sous
Roger paids tiny. n ork: mes aed, udieeeo Aisaus
Houdée,: plasterer ‘iii. D985 Higvtaee- cot 6 sons
Colih paid viii, Uyovk ta heesoasstohee oc “GSOEs
Jehan paid. isimou.hen dotin. Seki) sondbeos
Hoenritpaids> «i wose dot Gites To. MELO es
Jehan paid .. hates Senet bale rel sons
Mestre Yves, plasterer SWB nar ecdat. ovLOrsOus
76
Le Roman de la Rose (fourteenth century)

Raoul paid . .. . . . 3livres 10sous

Dame Mary, plasterer and two
children = f° yaa peer. Ss iiytes “12 sous

Raoul and Dame Mary quite probably owned quarries

of gypsum (mineral from which plaster is made), of
which there were important deposits in the region about
Paris, particularly on the hillsides of Montmartre. Plaster
of Paris was in great demand and exported as far as
England and, of course, is famous even today.
The names of several women plasterers, cementers and
even, very rarely, masons are found in this text, for these
were the guilds which, all things considered, were not too
physically demanding. Conversely, there is no evidence
of women stonecutters or quarry workers. However,
Dame Mary, the plasterer who paid 4 livres 12 sous for
77
herself and her two children, was not a worker. She must
have inherited the business from her husband. The thir-
teenth-century woman had more legal rights than the
French woman today, restricted as she is by laws adopted
from the Roman juridical system. Even married women
paid taxes on their own income and in their own name,
for example: “Roger the stonecutter ... 16 sous; his wife
. 5 sous.” A woman was named in contracts signed
by her husband and, at his death, she could transact his
real estate business directly with the Church. Raingarde,
widow of Master Arnoul, stonecutter at Reims, in 1225
sold a house to the Church of Saint-Symphorien and one
to Clarambard, a canon at Reims. At the same time she
busied herself having this sale ratified by her son Raoulet,
at that time a minor, until he reached legal age, for which
she gave as guarantee another house located in the Rue
Saint-Etienne. The preachers and moralists of the Middle
Ages, in slandering women, have masked the active and
constructive role they played in that society. The part
women played in the success of the cathedral crusade
was decisive and should be recognized.
We find among the mortarmen as among the plasterers
a great number of taxes:

Marguerite, mortarmans 1.4 a Se sou

Richard, miortarnian a twprreii oe 2 ® eagons
Robert mortarman (vies o Pa Toe ies. sous
Vincent, mortarman > .)%.)., <j. +)... <) 3/80Us
Guerin, mortarmah’ <2" Se" Vf ae Ra, hives
Pierre, mortarman=y . a «KC Ces

But it must be noted here that the term “mortarman”

probably covered two trades. There was in Paris, near
the Seine, a street of mortarmaking where the mortar-
men’s products were found. They worked with lias stone,
a hard stone found in the neighborhood of Paris which
was without any faults and capable of being highly
polished. Theirs was a delicate profession requiring a
long apprenticeship. It was to these mortarmakers that
statute sixteen of Etienne Bouleau’s work was probably
addressed: “Mortarmen cannot take an apprentice for
less than 6 years’ service.”
78
 Paragraph twenty-one refers especially to mortarmen:
“Mortarmen have been absolved of night-watch and all
stonecutting since the time of Charles Martel, as men
have understood from father to son.” To be exempt from
night-watch was an important privilege. It is certainly
not logical that those who simply made mortar needed
at least six years of apprenticeship or that they were
exempt from night-watch, a rarely accorded favor. A
careful distinction must be made between the men who
worked with hard stone and the simple laborers who
made mortar from that same stone.
Porters, cementers, mortarmen, and stonecutters were
only one part of the family of stoneworkers; plasterers,
plaster mixers, and masons made up the other part. The
statutes of Etienne Boileau confirm this: “The cementer
and the plasterer are of the same status and the same
lodge of masons in all respects.” The mason was above
all else a stone layer. The English word explains this
act of placing or setting stones, calling it “setting” or
“laying.” The English words that designate various
specialized workers are quite interesting since they reveal
the origin of the word “freemason” and give an insight
into how “operative” freemasonry (which preceded the
contemporary “speculative” freemansonry — composed of
men not masons by profession: a social fraternal organi-
zation) was born and developed. We will return again to
this very controversial question.
79
 In the Cathedral of Bourges one window was donated
by the masons and another by the stonecutters. Numer-
ous manuscript illuminations depict masons at work.
Most often they are represented working on walls with
their tools: the trowel, level, and plumbline. At the foot
of the walls cementers are shown mixing, and laborers
carrying it or stones up to the masons.
Mason’s names disappeared from the accounts in the
winter since freezing weather put a stop to all stone
Jaying. Before leaving the job, masons took great care
to cover the upper part of the wall with straw or dung
to protect the stones and joints from winter rains. Some
of the masons more skilled at stonecutting remained in
the shop or lodge at the foot of the walls. Others went
to work in the quarries, and, finally, there were those
who, being married, rejoined their wives and worked on
their small farms during the winter. They rented their
used wagons to the chapter to transport stone to the shop
from the quarries. If a mason’s annual wages were less
than those of the stonecutters who were hired to work
the year round, their daily wages were about the same.
In the accounts of the Monastery of the Brothers of St.
Augustine in Paris, both the masons and the stonecutters
made at least twenty-two deniers per day: :

To 3 stonecutters, 5 days each: 27 sous 6 deniers

(This would be 22 deniers per day.)
To Regnaut de Senlis and Jehan de Meudon, masons,
4 days each at 22 deniers per day: 15 sous 4 deniers

This latter is an example of one of the frequent errors

in calculation mentioned above. The sum should have
been 14 sous 8 deniers, not 15 sous 4 deniers.
Masons enjoyed certain advantages. For example, the
workshop foreman furnished them with gloves to protect
their hands from lime burns, and they were given certain
gratuities when a job was completed or when a keystone
was put into place. Some of the more fortunate masons
listed in the registry of stonecutters — for example, Gefroi
and Symon de Baine, who were paid respectively 1 livre
4 sous and 2 livres 8 sous — could have been contractors
capable of directing small workshops by contract.
80
 The 104 masons men-
tioned in the roll of 1292,
several of whom undoubted-
ly worked in the workshop
at Notre-Dame de Paris,
lived far from one another,
scattered all over the city of
Paris. Renaud the mason
and Jehan Pasquier lived
with the “little people,”
“beyond the Porte Saint-
Honoré and the parish of
Saint-Germain 1|’Auxerrois.”
Gautier the mason, Simon,
Lorenz, and Tibaut lived in
the Rue du Pilori right at the
abbey. Pierre the mason
lived in the Rue de la Bou-
cherie.
One of the leading figures
of the cathedral crusade was
the quarryman, although he
is often overlooked. He did
not work at the shop, and he
seems ta have lived outside
the community. Very few
authors mention him. The
first Etienne Boileau, failed
to mention him in his stat-
utes. Yet the quarryman left
his youth and his health in
the quarries. His was a life
of pain, for he had to work
under the most adverse con-
ditions. He suffered from
the dampness of many quar-
ries and was frequently over-
come by poisonous air in
underground cuttings. He
was poorly paid, hardly re-
ceiving more than a common
laborer. In the Paris tax
register, the quarryman Guillaume, Pierre, Renaut, and
Jehan were among the “little people’ who paid only
twelve deniers.
It was in the quarry that medieval man came to know
stone, for it was there that he served his apprenticeship.
No antique tradition had survived to teach him the
qualities and faults of this primary material. He had to
teach himself how to reckon bed or vein heights and
compute their worth and, in general, he had to teach him-
self a feeling for stone.
The function of the quarryman in the first phase of
each new project was singularly important. He had to
extract thousands of cubic yards of stone required for
foundations, and his work often began even before the
workshop was established. When Edward I of England
founded that country’s last Cistercian Abbey at Vale
Royal in Cheshire in 1277 at the crown’s expense, the
master of the works, Walter of Hereford, sent laborers
into the quarry before actually opening the workshop.
They worked in groups of eight, each group under the
command of a master quarryman. In a period of three
years, from 1278 to 1281, exactly 35,448 cartloads of
stone were transported from the quarry to the workshop
about five miles away. Estimating roughly that each
cartload of stone weighed a ton, 35,000 tons of stone
must have been quarried. This means a cart would have
left the quarry every fifteen minutes of a working day!
Knoop and Jones, two English historians who have
scrupulously analyzed the accounts of these three years,
have shown that while only five to ten per cent of the
masons and stonecutters were recruited from the region,
eighty-five per cent of the quarrymen were of local origin.
Master quarrymen such as Robert de Inis, Paul de
Alueton or Richard Louekin received a salary twice as
high as that of other quarrymen. This is given in terms
of percentage to avoid misleading comparisons: English
sous and deniers did not have the same value as the
Parisian. Master quarrymen were generally paid for each
stone extracted. Examining the account of the fabric at
Autun, we see that Robert Clavel paid Master Chevillard,
a master quarryman, so much for each stone quarried in
proportion to its size. Thus Master Chevillard received
82

Construction of Modena Cathedral (thirteenth century)

 jf ee mabe,
De aN rmaney cv fra
Boe BE AME et
Ae ea 4
i
. eee :

ewan.
10 livres for a thousand stones, 2 livres 9 sous 6 deniers
for 150 stones, and 4 livres for 200 stones. This means
that he earned about 2 deniers for each stone of the first
size, 4 deniers for each of the second size, and 5 for
each of the third.
Certain individuals listed in the accounts as “quarry-
men” were actually businessmen who rented or bought
quarries which they exploited. These were men with a
special standing. In the roll of 1292, Asce the quarry-
man paid 6 livres in taxes, 120 times more than quarry-
men Guillaume, Pierre, or Jean. Asce obviously was not
a laborer but a quarry owner. So also were Thibaut des
Halles and Hugon, who were listed in the accounts of the
Brothers of St. Augustine as “quarrymen”: “To Hugon,
quarryman of Notre-Dame des Champs, for large foun-
dation stones ... 6 livres.”
The cost of transporting stones in the Middle Ages
was so high that it was essential to dress them at the
quarry. It has been calculated that transporting a load
of stone from the quarry to a workshop about twelve
miles distant cost as much as to buy the stones in the
quarry. Consequently, the workshop foreman often sent
stonecutters to work at the quarry with given specifi-
cations. Measurements were generally given in terms of
toises, feet, and inches. *
The Middle Ages sought to standardize stone measure-
ments. In 1264 the city of Douai issued a legal publi-
cation specifying that all carreaux — blocks of stone
shaped in parallelepipeds — coming into the city must
have six by eight inches of facing (facing is the side of
a stone visible in a wall) and eight inches of bed (in this
case bed indicating the depth of the stone). This block
was a stone that served asa header, the one with its
small end exposed in the surface of a wall.
All the stones used in building the choir of the Augus-
tinian monastery in Paris must have had the same
dimensions since each one cost 2 deniers 8. All stone-
cutters who cut stones to measure, making allowances
for bed height and thickness, were paid the same thing:
“For cutting 128 measured stones and four feet of
pavingstone, by the piece ... 64 sous. For cutting 112
* 6 feet = 1 toise.

84
 measured stones and half a pavingstone, by the piece ...
56 sous 9 deniers.” The worker was here paid 6 deniers
per toise.
On the other hand, stonecutters were sometimes paid
by the day or the week, although no one knows exactly
why some workers were paid by the job and others by the
day. However, it seems probable that when an unknown
worker presented himself to the foreman to be hired,
he was hired by the job so that his skill and his work
could be tested. After proving his professional capabili-
ties, he could then be paid by the day. Needless to say,
laborers preferred this second system of payment.
From numerous observations on masons’ marks *
incised on cathedrals, monasteries, fortified chateaux,
and city fortification walls in various provinces in France,
the following hypothesis can be drawn concerning piece-
work. It seems to have been a mode of payment more
frequent in the twelfth century than in the thirteenth;
more widespread in Alsace, south of the Loire, and
particularly in Provence, than in the north; more usual
in little workshops such as that of the Brothers of St.
Augustine than in the large workshops such as at Char-
tres or Amiens where it seems practically nonexistent.
Commandeered workers were generally paid by the piece.
The walls of Aigues-Mortes are literally covered with
the marks of pieceworkers; and we know that in 1244 it
was necessary to requisition workers from Alés to force
them to work at Aigues-Mortes “under penalty of their
persons and their goods.” The same was also true at the
fortified Chateau de Coucy, raised so rapidly in the thir-
teenth century, and built by common laborers comman-
deered by the powerful lord of Coucy. On these walls
over sixty different masons’ marks have been found.
What exactly is a mason’s mark? Each stonecutter had
to have a distinctive sign which he could engrave on any
one of the faces of the cut stone when he was being paid
by the piece to permit the workshop foreman to check on
the quality of his work and at the end of the week to
total up the number of stones he had cut and pay him
accordingly. There is a great variety of signs. There are
* These marks were not made only by masons. The designation is a gene-
ral one for all pieceworkers’ marks. (Trans. note.)

85
 geometrical figures such as triangles or pentagons, tools
such as pickaxes or hammers, crosses, letters of the
alphabet representing perhaps the first letter in the
worker’s name. Occasionally a worker engraved the first
three letters of his name and, rarely, even his whole |
name. In the eleventh and twelfth centuries these signs
were cut very roughly but in the thirteenth they were cut
much more carefully. Fathers handed down their marks
to their sons. While their fathers were still alive, sons
had to make a distinction between their identical marks.
For example, if a father’s mark was a cross (+), his son
might use a cross with an additional mark (+’). Little
by little these marks acquired a sentimental value, and
certain of those found on the nave piers at Notre-Dame
de Paris, for example, or on the transept piers at Chartres
were engraved by stonecutters engaged by the day or by
the week simply as expressions of personal pride. Eventu-
ally masons’ marks developed into types of signatures. In
the fifteenth century an architect such as Alexandre de
Berneval placed a five-pointed star after his name.
Since numerous masons’ marks have been found in
monasteries it is clear that the orders employed outside
help in building their abbeys. They have been found at
Sylvacane, at Senanque on the pillars of the nave, at
Montmajour, at Fontenay in the Cote-d’Or, on the
exterior wall at the famous Benedictine church in Issoire.
Many of these signs were cut on the engaged face of
the stone and were not discovered until the walls were
destroyed. Marks engraved on church interiors were not
visible because the walls were covered with paintings.
The masons who laid these stones cared nothing about
the marks and occasionally they are found opposite the
facing. By systematically studying the marks of a given
region, one can trace workers, in exceptional cases, from
one workshop to another.
Certain masons’ marks were the work of quarrymen.
It was necessary to identify the source of stone coming
from two quarries into one workshop: this was very
important to the future solidity of the construction
because each wall had to be built of stones from the
same source to insure that it would settle evenly. Quarry
marks also insured that later repairs would be made with
87

Stonecutters’ marks taken from Strasbourg Cathedral

 the correct stone. The Romans also seem to have used
this method of marking since quarry marks are found
on stones in their buildings.
One must not confuse masons’ and quarrymen’s marks
with “position marks.” When it was necessary to as-
semble a number of stones the dresser gave precise in-
structions to the stonecutters, that they cut in such and
such a manner the different blocks for future assembly.
This being done, masons could, when the time came,
accurately fit these stones together before cementing
them. The Romans had previously employed this method
of construction, and position marks are found engraved
on the stones of the Pont du Gard, for example. The
inscriptions indicate the positions of the blocks in the
construction (fronte dextra, fronte sinistra). One can
read on the fourth arch of the second tier: FR.S.II
FR.S.III FR.S.IIII FR.D.V.. In the twentieth
century position marks are still used in constructing large
stone buildings.
Position marks are not generally apparent in medieval
construction until the stone sections have been dis-
mantled; then it is seen that in arches, for example,
stones which were to be adjoining had matching marks
incised in the faces to be joined. This permitted pieces
to be put up in the same order that they were cut. When
several arches had the same profile, each arch had a
particular mark to differentiate it from the others. One
of the piers in the smithy of Fontenay Abbey has exposed
position marks.
Position marks were also used to assure that the
placement of statues was not confused. The sculptures
symbolizing months of the year had been inverted at
Notre-Dame de Paris. The master of the workshop at
Reims did not want to suffer a similar misadventure with
his three thousand statues, so he conceived a system of
incised annotations to show a mason exactly where to
place each statue assigned to him. The position marks
indicated which facadé of the cathedral and which portal
was to contain a given statue and its position in that
portal.

89
Reims: position marks
FREEMASONS AND SCULPTORS

When Walter of Hereford sent laborers to the quarry

at Vale Royal, he had his carpenters build one lodge of
fourteen hundred boards to accommodate the stone-
cutters. The following year he built a smaller lodge of
one thousand boards. Whether the stonecutters were paid
by the piece or by the week, their lives centered in or
around the lodge. In the morning they went to get their
tools, they had lunch there, and in very hot weather they
took siestas there. There were always one or more lodges
at the workshop, and they can be seen located at the foot
of buildings under construction in manuscript illumi-
nations.
The lodges not only gave workers a place in which to
eat and rest, but they provided a place in which stone-
cutters could work in bad weather. For this reason these
lodges were very important during the winter months.
Stonecutters stayed in the lodges then and, sheltered from
the elements, prepared work for the masons who would
return to the shop only with the coming of good weather.
Yet nights were not spent in the lodges. In the cathedral
cities, workers were housed in inns or in private homes.
Due to the isolation of abbeys, wood dormitories were
erected for workers engaged in monastic construction
programs.
The lodge became,’in addition to being a place for
work and rest, a place in which problems of interest to
all could be discussed. In a way it was a club, and this
was the early beginning of masonic lodges in the modern
sense. The discussions carried on there could become
91
Van Eyck’s Saint Barbara. At the foot of the edifice, the stonecutters’ lodge
very heated. A text preserved in the Cartulary of Notre-
Dame de Paris cites an‘ incident that happened in that
cathedral’s lodge on Assumption Eve. It must have been
rather serious since reference to it was made in 1283
concerning a battle for control between the chapter and
the bishop of Paris. And the chapter must have used
armed intervention to control the situation. Little by
little, chapters came to control lodge life, the earliest
known rule being that handed down by the chapter of
York in 1352.
Masons and stonecutters were part of an essentially
floating working force, with many factors contributing
to their migration from workshop to workshop and
from country to country. Younger masons aspired to
new horizons, to learn new customs and different tech-

A contemporary Masonic Lodge: the Volney lodge at Laval

niques. Awed by their times, they wanted to see the
incredibly audacious edifices that were springing up
nearly everywhere in the Christian world. In a year’s
time they could expect to be hired successively at Mont-
Saint-Michel, Mans, Paris, Reims, and Strasbourg. There
were no borders and no passports in those days, and
masons could cross the Rhine to the east to work at
Cologne or over the Channel to the west to work at
Canterbury. What pride and pleasure a laborer must
have had in returning to his home town to describe the
wonders he had seen! The villagers would recall that
he had left home still almost a child to work in the
nearby quarry. Inspired by faith, some masons accom-
panied the crusaders into Asia where they built the
famous Krac of the knights and other strong forts to
protect holy places. Still others went along with famous
architects summoned to countries far across the sea, for
example, the stonecutters who went with Etienne de
Bonneuil when he sailed to Sweden to build the cathedral
at Upsala. Bachelors were of course more attracted by
the call to travel than married men. The latter were very
careful not to go too far from their homes, in order to
return at regular intervals.
Those who chose a wandering life did not all do so
solely for the thrill of travel. Some quit one workshop
to find another where the pay was higher. Often, too,
workers took to the road to find new work not of their
own free will but because the shop was closing, because
the foreman, dissatisfied with their work, fired them
without notice or pay, or because funds were exhausted
and the shop closed while work was temporarily sus-
pended.
On the other hand, conscription threw men onto the
roads against their will and effected a major mobility
among the builders, particularly in England where the
king had the power to order county sheriffs to recruit
twenty-five to forty men and send them to a castle work-
shop sometimes hundreds of miles away. French con-
scription did not cause such a migration of workers
because no lord, not even the king, had the authority
necessary to requisition laborers from such a great
distance.
93
 The life of these builders contrasted sharply with that
of other laborers in the Middle Ages, who were for the
most part sedentary workers living in the same place the
year round. They traveled only exceptionally, and then
not for business reasons. In the public interest and for
the commercial prosperity of their cities, municipal
councils in the thirteenth century became concerned about
these stationary workers and succeeded in establishing,
with the approval of the city’s more important business-
men, charters to organize the trades and to form what
would someday become associations. Until the cities
intervened, there was rarely any organization by laborers
other than into charitable groups which have survived
today as mutual aid societies.
Turning to the situation in England, where fortunately
numerous charters such as those at York and Coventry
are preserved, one notices the absence of documents
concerning masons and stonecutters. This is explained
by their predominantly migratory character, which
allowed them to escape municipal control. Moreover,
these men worked for the Church or noblemen, who had
no interest in organizing guilds on their projects. The
Church lacked interest because organized workers could
band together disputing methods of employment and
wages. Lords opposed organization because eventually
workers would oppose the convenient conscription
system.
The first English city to make an exception was
London, where in the late fourteenth century traces of a
professional organization of stonecutters and masons
appeared. But London was then a city of fifty thousand
people, five to ten times more populous than York or
Coventry. There were necessarily more builders there
than in a less important city, and they were consequently
in a better position to organize themselves and to defend
their right to do so. The very size of London assured
its builders of constant employment and made them less
dependent on their two traditional patrons, the Church
and the nobility. There was a law concerning “masons,
stonecutters, plasterers, and cementers” in Etienne Boi-
leau’s book for this same reason: Paris was a city of
nearly two hundred thousand inhabitants, while Chartres
94
 and Amiens had only five or ten thousand. It was
Boileau’s forty-eighth entry that bore the royal seal, and
as pointed out above, the king appointed his own master
mason, Guillaume de Saint-Patu, to mastership over the
guild in Paris. This of course facilitated finding workers
for royal works.
The Latin terms that designated workers who cut stone
in the Middle Ages do not generally permit a distinction
to be made between those who simply quarried the stone
and those who cut the vault stones, window tracery, and
monumental portal sculpture. The sculptors were lost
among the general mass of stonecutters. This is really
rather extraordinary to us, because an enormous differ-
ence seems to exist between those who perform a
seemingly mechanical task, such as cutting blocks of
stone, and those who sculpt, with their very soul, the
magnificent statues in the cathedrals. The truth is that
for the great majority of men in the Middle Ages there
was between a good work and a masterpiece only a
difference of degree, not a difference of kind. The idea
that there is an unbridgeable gulf between a worker and
an artist (in the modern sense of the word) did not really
occur until the Renaissance when it was expressed by
intellectuals who judged, classified, and evaluated manual
labor which was very foreign to them.
It was the Renaissance writers who, for the first time
in history, extolled the personal merits of painters and
sculptors, resulting in an excessive deification of both,
the consequences of which are still felt. The Renaissance
fabricated the notion of “the artist.” The medieval
thinker hardly ever expressed himself in his writings on
actual questions of aesthetics, and when he did concern
himself with what we call “art,” it was in terms of
theology or philosophy. Why? Did he more or less
consciously hold manual labor in disdain and relegate
both sculptor and mason to the same ill-favored category?
Was he insensitive to the beauty of forms? Or was it
because he intuitively perceived that a beautiful statue or
a beautiful window were complete works in themselves,
sufficient in themselves and thus requiring no comment?
- (In this connection it should be noted that the glorifi-
cation of the “artist” since the Renaissance, even though
95
 it would seem to be a promotion, has been nothing more
than a placement of art under the guardianship of
literature. Art henceforth was always to await its justifi-
cation from literature.)
To avoid this problem of terminology, the word “artist”
is deliberately not used here, since it adds nothing to the
greatness of the cathedral builders and because its current
Meaning is essentially foreign to the spirit of the Middle
Ages. Only in the dictionary of the French Academy of
1762 was “artist” mentioned in the sense that we now
understand it.
In England, however, the terms that designated stone-
cutters permit a certain distinction to be made between
laborers who did the heavy work and those who executed
the more refined work. This distinction is based on the
characteristicsof the stone worked. For example, those
who worked the particularly hard stone found in Kent
were known as “hard hewers.” They were distinguished
from “freestone masons” who worked the beautiful
calcareous stone found in great abundance from Dorset
to the Yorkshire coast and which was perfect for the
delicate work of sculpture-carving. “Freestone masons”
were also distinguished from “rough masons” who simply
rough-hewed the stone.
The expression “freestone mason” was replaced after
a while by the simplified “freemason,” a word which
evidently had to do with the quality of stone and not
with any franchise which would have benefited builders.
When honorary freemasonry was introduced into France
from England about 1725, it was naturally translated as
franc-magonnerie, an expression unknown in the Middle
Ages. On the other hand, it is known that in London in
1351 a maitre magon de franche peer was more or less
the Anglo-French equivalent of two Latin expressions:
sculptores lapidum liberorum (London, 1212) and magis-
ter lathomus liberarum petrarum (Oxford, 1391). The
modern English and French translations of this second
term would be: a master mason of freestone and un
maitre tailleur de franche pierre.
Application of the words franc or franche (“free”) to
stone in France has survived uninterruptedly to the
present. The beautiful building-stone found in the region
97
Abbey church of Saint-Gilles: head of an Apostle (twelfth century)
about Paris has long been spoken of as “free liais,” a
term which is still applied to veins of excellent quality.
When I visited the underground quarries of Paris, an
engineer in charge of supervising the subterranean part
of the capital showed me the inner side of a tunnel and
told me, much to my surprise, that to designate veins of
stone of the very best quality one would say “free veins.”
Stone used for sculpture did not often have the same
grain as that used for building the walls to which the
statues were attached. A rapid glance at the Portail
Royal at Chartres is sufficient to show that the stone of
these famous statue-columns was not taken from the
quarry at Berchéres. And at Vézelay the capitals are
not of the same stone used in buildings the rest of the
church.
The frequent trips made by stonecutters from shop to
shop, gave them the opportunity to examine stone from
many quarries. It was made possible for some of them
to work with the stone best suited to their capabilities,
and others were able to have stone ordered from a specific
quarry for a specific difficult job. The sculptors had a
true love for material of high quality. Knowing the high
cost of transportation at this time, one can only admire
the intelligent understanding of those who bore the
additional expense of these costly shipments of stone.
Studying the sculptor’s position in medieval life and
his role in the complex problem of the iconography of
the time makes it clear that his position was constantly
changing from the beginning of the eleventh century until
well into the fourteenth. Any concern with the problem
of creativity naturally raises the question of the sculptor’s
part in the choice and execution of these masterpieces.
Due to the lack of texts, one is frequently reduced to
more or less accurate hypotheses on the subject. But, so
far as possible we must abstain from our modern way
of thinking. The danger of using the word “artist” to
describe or recall these creators of the past has already
been pointed out.
One way of arriving at a better understanding of the
creators of a given period is to relocate them in the frame-
work of the history of oral, literary, or visual techniques
of expression according to their historical situation. In
98
 ae
cos i for sculptures has a different grain from stone for walls” (Chartres: Royal
Portal)

this case it is the visual. Paleolithic man expressed him-

self by shaping bone objects or by means of wall paintings
such as those at Lascaux; the Greeks of the fifth century
B.c. by painting of terra cotta vases or marble sculpture
such as that of the Parthenon; the Byzantines by ivory
work or great mosaics such as those at the Hagia Sophia;
the Italian Renaissance by bronze sculpture or easel-
painting; the United States by movies or television. These
techniques of expression provide a partial insight into the
religious thought and ethics of the society. But tech-
99
niques of expression are in a state of perpetual evolution,
one in connection with the others, susceptible to trans-
formations of thought and material changes in the com-
munities where they appear. Some for a time reach a
level which we consider a great means of expression,
whereas others lose their privileged status to become
secondary or forgotten means of expression.
Theologians expressed the medieval thought of the
tenth and eleventh centuries in frescoes, gold work, and
miniatures, which were the primary means of expression
at that time, but not in sculpture. In the course of the
eleventh century when stonecutters, thanks to a better
understanding of their material, began to carve little
representational scenes, they doubtless did so freely and
without ecclesiastical supervision. Their timid, gauche
attempts received little attention, but their ceaseless efforts
and progress finally attracted monastic attention by the
end of the eleventh century to this new technique, in the
western Christian world. Monks made personal contracts
with these sculptors and gave them themes to execute.
Thus was born in southwest France and Burgundy the
monumental sculpture that first appeared in the Cluniac
priories of Moissac, Toulouse, Autun, and Vézelay.
Society was then bathed in a religious atmosphere: from
his youth on the stonecutter was in daily contact, at home
as well as in the Church, with the scenes that served as
subjects for his creations. There was something of a
universally common inspiration which explains how a
given subject retained its identity almost perfectly in
regions far distant from one another.
Monumental sculpture rapidly developed and became
a major means of expression from the twelfth century
on. From the middle of the century stained glass in its
turn gained considerable importance at the expense of
frescoes, as window areas increased and wall surfaces
diminished. In the thirteenth century fresco-painting
became a lost means of expression.
Within what limits did the sculptor’s freedom evolve?
In the first place, it must be made clear that in an
“ascendant” period there can be no creators who are
misunderstood or in opposition to those who commis-
sion work. There can be only divergent opinions on details.
100
 It is certainly wrong to think that the Lascaux painters
made their point of view prevail over that of the magicians
who were the theologians of the time. The sculptors of
the Parthenon were able to discuss form with the priests
within certain limits, but no more. This submission of
creator to the directives of magician or priest is natural
to creation. It was a principle or a tradition so self-evident
that only rarely have societies had occasion to state it
in writing. A famous exception to this rule was that
document compiled by the Church Fathers at the Second
Council of Nicaea in 787. They were faced with the
necessity of clarifying what, until the extraordinarily bitter
iconoclastic controversy broke out, had long been clear
to the Catholic Church. It was stated that

the composition of religious images is not left to the

inspiration of artists; it exemplifies those principles
established by the Catholic Church and religious tra-
dition. Art pertains only to paintings, its composition
to the Fathers.

It would be impossible to be more explicit. In removing

the Christ from the choir of the famous church of Assy
in Haute-Savoie, the Church was only complying with
the principles established at the Council of Nicaea twelve
centuries earlier. One might ask if the Nicene text should
not be placed in capital letters at the entrance to exhi-
bitions of sacred art, and if everyone desiring to work
for the Church should not be required to memorize it.
Becoming a sculptor, the stonecutter rose to the world
of the spirit. He was closer to the theologians and learned
more through this contact; he had the wonderful oppor-
tunity to thumb through precious manuscripts in abbeys;
he learned to look, observe, think. His intellectual horizon
was expanding, which permitted him to participate spirit-
ually as well as physically in his creations. Thanks to
the manuscript minaturés leafed through and admired in
various abbeys, the sculptor could humbly suggest slight
variations in the subjects proposed by the Fathers. Since
the sculptor and the theologian worked toward the same
goal, the sculptor could consider himself free, for in this
association he did not submit to any constraint. In this
101
sense it could be said that the difference between the ©
artist of today and the medieval sculptor is that the latter
was not an individualist since he did not claim the rights
of personal inspiration. However, a legitimate pride did
overcome the spirit of these workers with humble back-
grounds, and sculptors did not hesitate, especially in the
twelfth century, to sign their works. Gislebert signed the
famous tympanum of Autun: “Gislebertus fecit hoc opus.”
Giraud signed the portal of Saint-Ursin in Bourges;
Umbert, a capital of the porch at Saint-Benoit-sur-Loire;
Rettibitus, a capital of Notre-Dame du Port in Clermont.
Sculptors were not the only workers who signed their
creations. The mason Durandus signed one of the vault
keystones at Rouen Cathedral about 1233 with “Durandus
me fecit.” And in the same cathedral, the glassmaker
Clément de Chartres signed his window. This Latin term
me fecit must be used carefully, remembering that it

Autun: the tympanum

could concern the person who ordered or paid for the
work as well as its actual creator. Yet it is obviously
incorrect to insist on the absolute anonymity of the ca-
thedral builders. Not all medieval sculpture is signed,
but then neither is all that at Versailles, and no one has
ever considered the sculptors of the seventeenth century
anonymous,
_ The sculptor often worked on a block of stone already
in place in the building. This was true, for example,
with the capitals at Vézelay. The sculpture executed on
the fagade of Saint-Ferdinand des Termes in Paris’ 17th
Arrondissement in 1957 was worked like many twelfth-'
century pieces, right on the wall. The sculpture thus
becomes an integral part of the building. Statue-columns
of the twelfth century, such as those of the Portail Royal —
at Chartres, show this close collaboration between sculptor
and architect, a magnificent harmony that unhappily
lasted only a short time. The sculptor, perhaps having
lost a little of his former humility, wanted to make his
work independent, so he detached his sculpture from the
column. From that time forth he worked his block of
stone in the lodge, away from the church. He is seen
working in this way in the thirteenth century in a stained
glass window that he, together with the other stonecutters,
offered to Our Lady of Chartres.
Intoxicated by his freedom and his extraordinary
success in the spiritual and physical order of things, he
dreamed only of putting sculpture everywhere. He wanted
literally to cover churches with his creations and he suffo-
cated. them. Compositions became confused. Some of
the twelve hundred sculptures at Notre-Dame de Paris
were misplaced on the building. At Reims it was neces-
sary to number the cathedral’s three thousand sculptures
in much the same way that prefabricated parts are
numbered today. At Tournai sculptors established them-
selves and produced works to order.. In 1272 the abbot
of Cambron bargained ‘over prices with two sculptors to
cut and ship cut-to-specification window mullions to
Brussels.
Having broken with the architect, the sculptor next
‘dissociated himself from the theologian. Did he already
consider himself better than the mortals around him?
103
Was this the dawn of the Renaissance? He constantly had
to be brought back into line. The period of Christian
expansion was over. In 1306 the sculptor Tideman exe-
cuted a Christ for a London church which did not conform
to the accepted conventions. The bishop actively inter-
vened, had the Christ removed, and ordered Tideman to
return his fee.
Such freedom for the sculptor from all tradition, some-
thing that would have been impossible a century earlier,
coincided with a general weakening of the Faith. The
powerful and rich who previously had given their riches
to the cathedral now devoted their fortunes to increasing
their own comfort and satisfying their taste for life. They
built private chapels and city houses. Activity in the great
workshops ground to a halt as the better sculptors and
builders were hired away and hired to build and ornament
the mansions and chapels of the nobility. The situation
was similar to that in Athens in the fifth and fourth
centuries B.C.: the progressive era for Athens ended with
the Peloponnesian Wars. Throughout the fifth century
sculptors worked on such projects as the Parthenon, but
Athens was ruined in the fourth century and rich indi-
viduals hired sculptors — Praxiteles, for example —- to
appease their egotistic appetite for beauty.
But the French sculptor of the fourteenth century for
a long time could not profit from working for private
individuals because the Hundred Years’ War, beginning
in 1337, disrupted both his life and tranquility. It ended
prosperity and travel for the sculptor. National revenue
fell sharply. Misery and poverty were felt everywhere, and
plagues, famine, and battle all but decimated the popu-
lation. Rare indeed were the privileged who could still
engage sculptors. Life was of and for the war, a situation
in which sculpture was only a luxury. Workshops either
closed or slowed down, most, sculptors were impressed
into military service and then forced to build military
structures such as prisons and fortified castles. Needless
to say, delicate skill was not a primary concern. Local
stone was used since it was impossible to haul better
stone from great distances during the war. With the
impossibility of travel, new generations of workers forgot
where the famous quarries which had provided stone for
104
monumental sculpture were located. It is difficult to
recognize in these sculptors — compelled as they were to
carve stone cannonballs — the descendants of those who
built Chartres and Mont-Saint-Michel.
When the Hundred Years’ War ended in the mid-
fifteenth century, and stonecutters once again began to
sculpt, they could not return to the great tradition of the
cathedral crusade regardless of their efforts. The world
had changed, and in its turn stone sculpture had ceased
to be a living means of expression.
Ypres
 ipa!
ile KGS

Sg
ip
 THE ARCHITECTS

In 1955 the Bibliothéque Nationale in Paris included

in its great exhibition of French illuminated manuscripts
from the thirteenth to the sixteenth century the Sketch-
book of Villard de Honnecourt, the thirteenth-century
architect from Honnecourt, a small village in Picardy
between Cambrai and Vaucelles. This extraordinary
document from the hand of a true cathedral builder
contains thirty-three parchment leaves inscribed both
recto and verso and is quite familiar to historians. The
nineteenth-century architect Lassus published it in a fac-
simile edition accompanied by a detailed commentary.
Fortunately this edition is found in all major libraries and
permits anyone interested in the Middle Ages and its
architecture to study Villard’s plans profitably without
having to consult the original in the Bibliothéque Nation-
ale. The latest editor and commentator of the document
was Hahnloser, who clarified certain obscure points in
1935. Unhappily, this edition was published in German
in Vienna and has not yet bten translated into French
or English. *
This truly encyclopedic thirteenth-century text is of an
unparalleled richness. Several of the plans included in
the manuscript are generally known by the public, but
not all. Normally, it seéms satisfactory to reproduce only
Villard’s essays on triangulation although the document’s
major interest is its revelation of the universal curiosity
of the thirteenth-century architect. It was noted above
* The most recent edition in America is that by Theodore Bowie, The
Sketchbook of Villard de Honnecourt, Bloomington, Indiana, 1959,

107
Life of Saint Offar (thirteenth century)
that the synthesizing spirit which characterized the Middle
Ages is unlike the contemporary analytical mind with its
excessive specialization.
Since World War II young architects — probably due
to Le Corbusier’s influence — have, in a sense, learned
to think of achitecture in its totality. The contemporary
urbanist is very close to Villard. He studies all the
problems of his time. Architects have too long been’
theorists interested only in the aesthetics of architecture;
but now the human side of urbanism again brings together
the human considerations of a Villard de Honnecourt.
Despite everything, the eighteenth-century architect had
an advantage over his twentieth-century colleague: more
or less trained in the workshop, he knew how to operate
it without outside intervention from a contractor.
Villard introduces himself in his document in this way:

Villard de Honnecourt greets you and begs all who

will use the devices found in this book to pray for his
soul and remember him. For in this book will be found
sound advice on the virtues of masonry and the uses
of carpentry. You will also find strong help in drawing
figures according to the lessons taught by the art of
geometry. *

Villard’s interest in carpentry is worth noting. An

architect of his time had to have a profound knowledge
of the trade of carpentry because the master carpenter
was no less important than the master mason or the master
stonecutter. Under Philippe le Bel, for example, the royal
master carpenter and the royal master mason received
identical salaries and benefits. Whether they were at the
palace or not, they received 4 sous a day and a bonus of
100 sous paid on All Saints’ Day, and in addition to this
they were allowed to eat at the palace and each was
provided with two horses shod at the palace forge.
Part of the Villard manuscript is unfortunately missing,
and it is precisely that part concerning carpentry, This
is a great loss because with it much more knowledge of

* All English translation

of Villard de Honnecourt’s work from Theodore
Bowie, The Sketchbook of Villard de Honnecourt, Bloomington, Indiana
University Press, 1959.

108
Life of Saint Denis (fourteenth century)

the generally little known world of wood would be

available.
Quicherat observed that the subjects contained in the
manuscript can be classified as follows: (1) mechanics,
(2) practical geometry and trigonometry, (3) carpentry,
(4) architectural design, (5) ornamental design, (6) figure
designs, (7) furniture designs, and (8) subjects foreign to
the special knowledge of architects and designers.
Originally this manuscript was a true sketchbook.
Villard jotted down those things which interested him
so he could draw on them later for his own designs.
Hahnloser observed that not all the entries are by the
same hand, and he conctuded that the notes, which were
private at the beginning, eventually became the property
of the whole workshop. When Villard died the Sketch-
book must have been passed on to other architects who
added designs and comments to it.
We think that in a period of growth there.can be no
109
Villard de Honnecourt’s ‘‘Sketchbook”’: plan of Cambrai

misunderstood creators, that in such a period the saying,

“a prophet is without honor in his own country,” does
not hold true. Villard worked in the same region where
he was born. He may have rebuilt the Cathedral of
Cambrai near Honnecourt, of which he gives a plan of
the choir:

This is the plan of the choir of Our Lady of Cambrai

as it is now rising from the ground. Earlier in this
book you will find the inner and outer elevations, as
well as the arrangement of the chapels, the walls, and
the flying buttresses. ®
110
 This cathedral was destroyed in the early nineteenth
century but an extraordinary piece of luck has preserved
a photograph of an old wax relief map of the city of
Cambrai, which shows the choir constructed in Villard’s
time (and perhaps by him). This relief map was part of
a secret collection, created at the command of Louis XIV,
which represented cities of strategic importance and their
immediate surroundings. These models were evidently
withheld from the curiosity of the public and foreign
diplomats; they were still made in the eighteenth century
and even during part of the nineteenth. No longer of any
military value, they now constitute the basis of the very
interesting museum of relief maps temporarily located
in the attic of the Hétel des Invalides in Paris. When
Paris was occupied in 1815 following Napoleon’s defeat,
the Germans seized the opportunity to send certain of
them to Berlin, one being that of Cambrai and its ca-
thedral. Placed in the Berlin Arsenal, it was unwittingly
destroyed during the bombing and fire in the German
capital in 1944. Thus the photograph of the relief is all
that now shows this thirteenth-century cathedral.
Like other stonecutters and architects of his day, Villard
de Honnecourt traveled a great deal, and thanks to his
Sketchbook, we can follow some of his pilgrimages. He
visited Reims where he drew elevations of the cathedral;
Chartres, where he copied the west fagade rose and the
labyrinth (which he traced in a reverse direction); Meaux;
and Laon, where he very judiciously admired the ca-
thedral’s famous towers. He took great care in drawing
the oxen which are still curiously placed in the corners
of the towers. He went to Switzerland; to Lausanne for
-example, where he drew one of the cathedral’s rose
windows. But he went even farther, crossing Germany
to go to Hungary. He tells about it himself: “This is one
of the windows of Reims, in the area of the nave, as it
stands between two pillars. I had been invited to go to
Hungary when I drew this, which is why I liked it all the
more.” While in Hungary it is possible that he built the
cathedral dedicated to Saint Elizabeth at Marburg.
During these numerous trips Villard sketched, here and
there, many things that interested him. He observed
nature and animals, he drew insects — a grasshopper, a
111
 dragonfly, a bee, a snail; birds, wild animals — a hare and
a wild boar; and animals — a cat, a dog, horses. He also
drew animals that he saw in menageries — lion cubs, a
lion, a bear; and an imaginary animal — the dragon. These
designs were to serve as models for him or for the sculptors
who worked under him. For the same reason he drew
numerous figures, taking great care with drapery — a Christ
on the cross with the figures of St. John-and the Virgin,
a descent from the cross (a scene rarely drawn at that
time), a Virgin and Child, and the Twelve Apostles. In
addition to these holy people he drew two men shooting
dice (probably masons playing on a gauging board) and
two wrestlers. He also drew nudes, the designs for some
of which were certainly inspired by antiquity, and he
reproduced certain antique fragments. Roman monu-
ments were then much more numerous than now and the
contact between the Middle Ages and antiquity rather
close. With very few exceptions most Latin works were
known to scholars in the Middle Ages, but they did not
have the sometimes devoted and often systematic admi-
ration of the Renaissance for everything concerning
antiquity.
As noted above, some of the most frequently repro-
eS duced Villard drawings are those related to his essays on
triangulation. But too much importance need not be
attached to this expedient method of design since it was
only a useful scheme. Villard was interested in those
little inventions of which the Middle Ages seems to have
been so fond and which Americans now call “gadgets.”
He was especially interested in mechanical contraptions,
even for the Church: “How to make the eagle face the
Deacon while the Gospel is being read.” Following this
he designed and described a hand-warmer intended for
a bishop:

If you wish to make a hand-warmer, you must first

make a kind of brass apple with two fitting halves.
Inside this brass apple, there must be six brass rings,
each with two pivots, and in the middle there must be
a little brazier with two pivots. The pivots must be
alternated in such a way that the brazier always remains
upright, for each ring bears the pivots of the others. If
112

Villard de Honnecourt’s ““Sketchbook’’: descent from the cross

 Ancient technique...

you follow the instructions and. the drawing, the coals

will never drop out, no matter which way the brazier
is turned. A bishop may freely use this device at High
Mass; his hands will not get cold as long as the fire
lasts. That is all there is to it.’

This system was later’ adopted to keep mariners’

compasses horizontally level and barometers vertical.
Villard explained in detail the operation of a hydraulic
toy, then very much the rage, and a gully-hole, which
is a machine constructed on the principle of a siphon.
On another page, by means of the movement of a clock
which is schematically indicated, we learn “how to make
an angel keep pointing his finger toward the sun.”
114
...and medieval technique

Villard was not only interested in these “gadgets, ”

however. He was an avid engineer interested in serious
problems and inventions such as leverage machines. He
invented a screw combined with a lever, and he wrote
“how to make the most powerful engine for lifting
weights.”
Medieval miniatures show workers operating windlasses
and hand-winches which seem to be like those used by
the Romans. It is known that the system of the inclined
plane, used by the Egyptians to build the pyramids, was
practically never used to lift stones in cathedral con-
struction, evidently prohibited by houses surrounding
the churches.
Large treadwheels in which one or two men walked
115
much like squirrels were used to hoist materials up for
construction. The physical exertion required to operate
these treadwheels and gears was not excessive. Several of
these great wheels can still be seen: there is one at Mont-
Saint-Michel, one at Bourges over the vaults, and over
the vaults of various Alsatian churches. They were left
in place when the workshops closed to facilitate hoisting
material needed later to repair vault webs, roofs, etc. ©
It was the master carpenters who must have been
charged with inventing and constructing these lifting
devices. Because they were so costly to make, they were
not disassembled when the workshop closed and the
chapter could rent them when necessary.
Villard de Honnecourt occupied himself solving such
difficult problems as how to cut timber under water. In
the Sketchbook he drew a machine that he believed would
do this, and he wrote under the drawing: “By this means,
one can cut off the tops of piles under water, so as to
set a pier on them.” And he was careful to indicate in
the drawing that it was necessary to place a level and a
plumb-bob along the pile to guarantee the structure’s
verticality.
Like many others since, he tried to build a perpetual-
motion machine which would free man from slavery to
manual labor. Under the drawing of it he wrote: “Often
have experts striven to make a wheel turn of its own
accord. Here is a way to do it with an uneven number
of mallets and with quicksilver.” He was of course mis-
taken about the perpetual character of his machine, but
he did invent a semi-automatic machine to replace human
power in sawing wood efficiently: ““‘How to make a saw
operate itself.” This device was actually operated by
hydraulic power, very much in use in the Middle Ages.
And everywhere Villard’s interest in geometry is obvi-
ous:

Here begins the method of drawing as taught by the

art of geometry, to facilitate working.... On these
four pages are figures of the art of geometry, but to
understand them one must be careful to learn the
peculiar use of each.... All these devices are ex-
tracted from geometry.
116

From Villard de Honnecourt’s ““Sketchbook’*

. & SS< — Ly SAS
From Villard de Honnecourt’s ““Sketchbook”

Using geometry, one can measure the height of a

building or the width of a river: “How to measure the
height of a tower.” How to measure the width of a
watercourse without crossing it.” “How to make two
vessels so that one holds twice as much as the other.”
Lassus investigated the extent of Villard’s grasp of
geometry, and he observed that

finding the center of a circle after locating three points

on its circumference and proving a square indicate a
knowledge of the properties of a circle and perpen-
diculars. Measuring the distance from one point to
another or the height of a tower without being near
either is based on equilateral triangles with certain
conditions known. The problem of one vase having
twice the capacity of another is based on the measure
118
 of a circle and the square of the hypotenuse. The
drawings of a cloister presuppose a knowledge of the
properties of the diagonals of a rectangle.

Villard offered means by which stonecutters could

accurately outline a stone’s dimensions: “(How to cut an
oblique voussoir.” “How to cut the springing-stone of an
arch.” “How to make regular pendants: Place them
upside down.”
It is interesting to ask where Villard and the other
architects of his time acquired their knowledge of geome-
try, a science which was unknown to the eleventh cen-:
tury. An examination of the correspondence exchanged
about 1025 between the scholars Ragimbold de Cologne
and Radolf de Liége, two intellectuals of the time,
strikingly reveals the level of knowledge of geometry in
the eleventh century and proves that nearly every Greek
text had been lost during the course of the high Middle
Ages. Their correspondence shows that the authors were
incapable of finding by themselves anything that could
be called geometric science. The historian Paul Tannery
has written that “an analysis of these letters reduces itself
to proving their ignorance.” Ragimbold and Radolf dis-
cussed the definition of the exterior angle of a triangle (a
term they found in one of the rare works of antiquity in
their possession) without arriving at any agreement about
it. Nor could either set up a true demonstration of the
theorem concerning the equality of two right angles to
the sum of the angles of a triangle. Several years later
Francon de Liége was still vainly seeking the solution to
this problem, and we know that other scholars — Wazron,
Razegan, and Adelman - also tried this proof. So several
generations were uselessly spent on a relatively simple
problem without ever finding an answer.
If it can be proved that the intellectuals of the Middle
Ages did not reinvent geometry and that Greek texts had
almost entirely disappeared from western Europe, where
did men such as Villard de Honnecourt obtain their
information? Part doubtless came by direct transmission
from Roman ruins and through study of the work of
Vitruvius, a Roman architect of the first century B.c.
whose manuscripts were copied throughout the high
119
Middle Ages. But above all, it seems certain that archi-
tects drew their vast knowledge from Arabic scholarship.
During the course of the ninth and tenth centuries
Moslem scholars had translated a great part of the scien-
tific works of classical antiquity into Arabic, notably the
works of Aristotle, Plato, Euclid, and Ptolemy. The
Arabs, ordering in a magnificent synthesis the knowledge
obtained from classical antiquity and from India, assimi-
lated arithmetical knowledge, developed chemistry and
algebra, and for all practical purposes invented trigono-
metry. This vast culture was taught in Arabic universities
in Spain in the eleventh and twelfth centuries to Moslem
as well as to Christian and Jewish students. Raymond,
Archbishop of Toledo from 1126 to 1151, established a
school of translators to translate from Arabic into Latin
texts of both Greek and Arabic authors. It was thus that
Adélard of Bath translated the complete works of Euclid
at a time when western Europe still knew only the
enunciation of several of his theorems. In 1145 Robert of
Chester translater the algebraic work of Al-Khawarizmi.
This date marks the appearance of algebra into Europe.
Gérard of Cremona translated Ptolemy’s Almagest and
Al-Zarqali’s works on trigonometry, which demonstrate
the uses of signs and tangents. Plato’s Timaeus, Meno,
and Phaedo were also translated.
By the middle of the twelfth century Greek and Arabic
scientific culture was accessible to western European
scholars. The Arabic element in the foundation of our
civilization is often underestimated, although it permitted
the full flowering of the Middle Ages. Without this
formidable basis the Renaissance would have developed
slowly and painfully. And we in the twenthieth century
would perhaps .be only at the scientific and technical
level of the last century. The United States would doubt-
less still be in the’horse and buggy era.
In the schools (of Chartres and Paris) such men as
Villard or his twelfth-century predecessors might have
gained knowledge of this scientific culture, as well as by
studying Latin and Picard manuscripts. At the school of
Chartres in the mid-twelfth century one could follow
the courses of Thierry de Chartres and Guillaume de
Conches, both of whom were familiar with Aristotle’s
120

Le Puy: the Arabic influence on architecture

SSE ARGNEO
theories of physics. Also, certain scientific works written
in Latin were in turn translated into the Romance
languages or into the Picard dialect, perhaps for the use
of specialists such as the cathedral builders. One thir-
teenth-century manuscript, written in the same dialect as
Villard’s, is still preserved and can be consulted in the
Bibliothéque Sainte-Geneviéve in Paris. Its author con-
cerned himself with mathematical problems: “If you
want to find the area of an equilateral triangle....” “If
you want to know the area of an octagon....” “If you
want to find the number of houses in a circular city... .”
The solutions to these problems are explained in detail
and accompanied by supplementary figures. The spirit
and style of this text are echoed by Villard:

How to find the mid-point of a drawn circle....

How to méasure the diameter of a column, only part
of which is visible.... And if you wish to see a good
and easily made wooden roof, study this one.

However, it cannot be supposed that Villard de Honne-

court or the other architects of his age had acquired a
profound knowledge of geometry, trigonometry, or
algebra. The knowledge of these cathedral builders must
have been above all empirical. Yet it is quite likely that
contact with this science helped to give more mathe-
matical accuracy to the development of the plans and
elevations of the great cathedrals.
Two designs on page 39 in the Sketchbook * showing
a group of squares merit particular attention. Under the
center one in the plan is written: “How to lay out a
cloister with its galleries and courtyard.” However, there
is no further explanation and this design needs commen-
tary. The exterior square is twice the size of the inner
one and is obtained by tracing the diagonal of the smaller
square and then constructing a square having this
diagonal as one of its sides. This new square is twice
as large as its predecessor. In other words, the first
square has been doubled and the result drawn around
it. The cloister garden has an area equal to half that of
the whole cloister; the scale or ratio is 2:1, an ele-
* Bowie, op, cit., plate 55.

122
 Villard de Honnecourt’s ‘‘Sketchbook’’: detail of page 39

mentary proportion frequently found in medieval con-

struction. Medieval designers clearly showed a preference
for simple relationships (2: 1 and 1:2, 3:1 and 1: 3).
Units of measure varied from one city to another, and
architects avoided scaling their plans and were particu-
larly interested in proportions which could be transposed
from plans to actual scale or dimension without having
to use a scale. In the Sketchbook under the rectangle
placed almost directly below the squares of the cloister
is this explication: “How to divide a stone so that each
of its halves is square.” This must not be taken too
literally because in practice stones are never cut this way.
In this square * the diagonals connecting the sides to
the middle have been drawn. The inner square thus
obtained is one-half the area of the former.
The interest in these two designs on page 39 at first
does not seem justified and there is nothing truly remark-
able about them at all. For Villard or “Master II,” the
supposed continuer of the Sketchbook, these two designs
do not seem to have been any more important than the
twenty or so other designs on the same page. But what
is interesting is that these two rectangles caught our
attention when we weré leafing through an extraordinary
document published in Regensburg more than two centu-
ries later, in 1486(?), by the German architect Mathias
Roriczer with the permission of the bishop of that city.
The work is modestly entitled On the Ordination of
* Ibid., plate 55-J.

123
 Pinnacles. We were immediately struck by the resem-
blance between Roriczer’s designs and those on page 39
of Villard’s Sketchbook. The German’s designs are much
more detailed and explicit as well as more difficult to
understand for those unaccustomed to reading documents
on geometry and unfamiliar with problems of con-
struction. Roriczer explains how to design correctly a
pinnacle based on a plan. He constructed one square
inside another following the method employed by Villard,
and in this inner square he constructed a third one; he
then rectified these squares so that they fit one within
another like the rectangle on page 39 of the Sketchbook. *
From this the pinnacle grew little by little. The real
interest in this operation is that Roriczer is actually in
the process of revealing the secret of the masons. The
masons’ secret according to this architect would therefore
be the art of taking an elevation from a plan. This
method of designing pinnacles is in actuality a general
method of designing also the other parts of a cathedral,
whence its importance.
A document from 1459 confirms Roriczer’s statement.
In that year master masons from such cities as Stras-
bourg, Vienna, and Salzburg met at Regensburg in order
to codify their lodge statutes. Among other decisions,
they decided that nothing was to be revealed concerning
the art of taking an elevation from a plan to those who
were not in the guild: “Therefore no worker, no master,
no ‘wage earner,’ or no journeyman will divulge to any-
one who is not of our guild and who has never worked
as a mason how to take the elevation from the plan.”
These two documents, Roriczer’s and that of the as-
sembly of 1459, have often led historians to premature
conclusions about the secret or secrets of the masons.
What was a secret in the fifteenth century was not
necessarily one in the thirteenth. Professional organi-
zation had profoundly changed during the twelfth and
thirteenth centuries. Aftention has been called to the
dividing-line marked by the end of the thirteenth century
in medieval history and the history of construction.
Beginning at that time, architects came to organize them-
selves on the basis of the guild system and came to agree,
* Ibid., plate 55-O.

125

Plan and elevation of a pinnacle according to Roriczer

little by little, not to communicate to outsiders the tech-
nical and scientific knowledge they had acquired through
exchanges with the outside world during the ascendant
period of the Middle Ages.
Plate 39 of the Sketchbook proves that Villard de
Honnecourt knew the principle which permitted the
taking of an elevation from a plan, but the thirteenth-
century architect did not consider it to be a secret. More-
over, the professors who taught geometry — then one of
the seven liberal arts — and art itself in the universities
taught their students Plato’s method of doubling a square.
The solution is found in Meno, in a dialogue between
Socrates and a slave. This Platonic passage is therefore
indirectly related to the origin of the method used to take
an elevation from a plan and the secret of fifteenth-
century stonecutters. About two thousand years separate
Plato and Roriczer. Remembering this, it is fascinating
and moving to listen to the discourse between Socrates
and the slave:

SOCRATES (to the slave): Tell me, my friend, do you

know that this space is square?
Socrates is reported to have traced, on the ground
or elsewhere, the figures necessary to his demon-
stration.
SLAVE: Yes.
SOCRATES: And that in a square space, the four lines
that are there are equal?
SLAVE: Without doubt.
SOCRATES: And that these lines which cross the
middle are also equal?
SLAVE: Yes.
SOCRATES: Can a space of this kind be both larger
and smaller?
SLAVE: Certainly.
SOCRATES: If one gives to this side two feet and to
the other two equal feet, what will be the overall
dimension? Examine the thing like this: if it has, on
this side, two feet, and, on this side, only one, is it
not true that the space would have one times two
feet?
SLAVE: Yes.
126
 SOCRATES: But from the moment that the second side
has two feet, that makes it two times two feet, doesn’t
it?
SLAVE: Yes.
SOCRATES: How much are two times two feet? Figure
it out and tell me.
SLAVE: Four, Socrates.
SOCRATES: Could one not have another space twice
the size of this one but similar, and with all the lines
equal?
SLAVE: Yes.
SOCRATES: How many feet would it have?
SLAVE: Eight.

This Platonic dialogue did not pass unnoticed by the

Romans and by Vitruvius who preserved it. The cathedral
builders could therefore have learned the solution of
doubling the square in the university, but much more
directly by reading Vitruvius’ De Architectura. This is
the text by the Augustan architect which was doubtless
known to medieval stonecutters:

First of all, among the many very useful theorems

of Plato, I will cite one as demonstrated by him. Sup-
pose there is a place or a field in the form of a square
and we are required to double it. This has to be
effected by means of lines correctly drawn, for it will
take a kind of calculation not to be made by means of
mere multiplication. The following is the demon-
stration. A square place ten feet long and ten feet
wide gives an area of one hundred feet. Now if it is
required to double the square, and to make one of two
hundred feet, we must ask how long will be the side
of that square so as to get from this the two hundred
feet corresponding to the doubling of the area. Nobody
can find this by means of arithmetic. For if we take
fourteen, multiplication will give one hundred and
ninety-six feet; if fifteen, two hundred and twenty-five
feet. Therefore, since this is inexplicable by arithmetic,
let a diagonal line be drawn from angle to angle of
that square of ten feet in length and width, dividing it
into two triangles of equal size, each fifty feet in area.
127
 Taking this diagonal line as the length, describe another
square. Thus we shall have in the larger square four
triangles of the same size and the same number of feet
as the two of fifty feet each which were formed by
the diagonal line in the smaller square. In this way
Plato demonstrated the doubling by means of lines, as
the figure appended at the bottom of the page will
show. *

The design by Vitruvius is lost.

The square was not only used to determine harmonious
proportions for a cloister or to design pinnacles based
on a plan, but also to establish the plans of certain
churches. The American archaeologist Sumner Crosby
of Yale University, who conducted a series of excavations
‘at Saint-Denis after the last war, has come to the con-
clusion that architect Pierre de Montreuil based the
reconstruction of .the nave and transepts on an ad
quadratum or square plan. The inclusion of such a long
passage from Crosby is justified by the fact that it
explains with maximum clarity the ideas behind a par-
ticularly engaging problem:

An attentive study of the nave and transepts proves

that the plan of Pierre de Montreuil’s constructions at
Saint-Denis spring from it [an ad quadratum plan].
The geometrical problem of how to divide a square
into nine equal squares and then subdivide the four
corner squares into four still smaller squares each was
resolved by the simplest means. Parallel lines dividing
the sides of the square into three equal parts intercept
diagonals at four principal points (the crossing), giving
birth to nine equal squares. Perpendiculars dividing
the corner squares in two divide each into four small
squares. The solution is self-determining and is based
strictly on intersections of 45° and 90°. Despite a
certain number of irregularities, it is evident that this
system was used at Saint-Denis to locate the placement
of the transept piers. These irregularities appear only
at those places where the new construction had to be
* English transtation from Morris Hicky Morgan, Vitruvius, Ten Books on
Architecture, Cambridge (Mass.), Harvard University Press, 1926, 252.

128
 joined to that of the twelfth century. A module * of
325 mm. must have heen used. The “royal” or “Pari-
sian” foot measured 324.84 mm. It is quickly realized
that its use permitted the construction of a square that,
with only the slightest corrections, matched the twelfth-
century masonry and allowed the foundations of the
nave which had been projected in the twelfth century
to be used in the thirteenth for the new nave walls.
This was the module which determined all of Pierre
de Montreuil’s major dimensions: the name and transept
bays are 6.50 m. long, or 20 modules, measured from
the center of one pier to another; the sides of the
crossing measure 13 m., or 40 modules, as does the
width of the nave, with a slight increase in width to
the west so that it could be set on the twelfth-century
foundations. Reusing the twelfth-century foundations
caused the side aisles of the nave to be 7 m. wide, a
deviation from the module. Another important di-
mension which seems to have been calculated on the
module in accord with the general proportions of the
transept was the height of the nave keystones which
has been called 29 m. But in point of fact, the distance
from the pavement to immediately under the keystones
of the ogives is 26 m. It is obviously difficult to
determine with what scale the master of the works
calculated the heights of the main vaults. And it must
be remembered that the present level of the pavement
is only approximately where it was in the thirteenth
century. But, accepting the 26 m. measurement, the
total is exactly 80 modules, which means that the
proportion of the nave width to its height is 1:2....
The impeccable logic which resulted from the use of
simple geometric principles produced harmonious pro-
portions. **

The history of doubling the square, the Regensburg

statutes, and Roriczer’s book must not make one overlook
the existence of the famous passage in Etienne Boileau
or the Regius or Cooke manuscripts in England, all of
* A module is a variable unit of length used to serve as a basis for the
planning measurements of a building.
** Sumner McKay Crosby, The Abbey of St.-Denis, 475-1122, New Haven,
Yale University Press, 1942.

129
which imply the existence of masons’ secrets. In effect,
the seventh paragraph of the forty-eighth statute con-
cerning masons, stonecutters, plasterers, and cementers
by Boileau reads as follows: “Masons, cementers, and -
plasterers may have as many aides and valets in their
service as they wish, as long as they show no one of them
any point of their trade.”
It has been very accurately noted that this forty-eighth
statute is the only one of the 101 entered by Boileau that
includes any mention or suggestion of a secret, which has
given rise to the idea that such a text was applicable only
to the trade of construction. But it is essential to point
out that the paragraph in question is addressed not only
to stonecutters and dressers, but to workers located right
at the bottom of the guild scale: to masons, cementers,
and plasterers. The guild master certainly did not ask
his workers to conceal from their aides and valets tech-
niques as complicated as those permitting the elevation
of a spire to be taken from its plan for the very simple
reason that these workers did not have the knowledge
required to comprehend the geometrical ideas necessary
to carry out such a project. More probably, the guild
master demanded that his workers not reveal, for example,
the proportion of the diverse elements which went into
the composition of mortar and plaster or how to recog-
nize stones of high quality. This passage refers more to
tricks of the trade than to true secrets. The word “secret”
does not really apply here. Moreover, this famous para-
graph cannot really be understood if it is not considered
with reference to the rest of the forty-eighth statute. It
came about with the increasing desire of the king and the
guild master to control a trade which until that time had
developed freely. ;
The two English manuscripts mentioned above — the
Regius, written about 1390, and the other, the Cooke of
about 1430 — contain numerous similarities since they
were adapted from the same manuscript which had been
drawn up about 1360 and contained both an account of
masonic practices and the legendary history of that pro-
fession. The Regius was drawn up by a cleric particularly
interested in religion and in moral precepts, and the
Cooke by an author very devoted to the trade. These
130
 two manuscripts were not professional statutes as were
those of Etienne Boileau or those of London in the
fourteenth century, although they have certain points in
common. Recopied through the centuries with many
variations, they form what are known as the masonic
constitutions. They are an important connection between
_ actual masonry and honorary freemasonry. The customs
or practices are divided into two parts: the “Articles”
which are addressed to masters, and the “Points” which
are addressed to workers. The latter must love God and
the Holy Church, accept money humbly, not fight among
themselves and, finally, conduct themselves discreetly.
The following is the appeal for discretion contained in
the Cooke manuscript:
“The third point is that he [the worker] keep secret
the counsels of his fellows, whether given in the lodge,
in the chamber, or any other place where masons be.”
And from the Regius, a more precise limitation:

The third point must be stressed with the apprentice,

therefore know it well. He keeps and guards his mas-
ter’s teachings and those of his fellows. He tells no
man what he learns in the privacy of his chamber,
nor does he reveal anything which he sees or: hears in
the lodge or anything which happens there.
Disclose to no man, no matter where you go, the
discussions held in the hall or in the dormitory; keep
them well, for your greater honor, lest in being free
with them you bring reproach upon yourself and great
shame upon your profession.
Masonic historians have for a long time thought that
secrets which workers were ordered not to reveal were of
an esoteric nature, but this has no basis, and we agree
with Knoop and Jones who have written on the matter:
It is well known that there were “secrets” because
the Articles and Points forbid their revelation; but
there is no reason to suppose that these secrets con-
tained anything more esoteric than the remarks or dis-
cussions in the lodge (which did not need to be told
to employees) as well as technical secrets of the trade
131
 concerning, for example, the design of an arch or the
manner of placing a stone so that as much of its grain
as possible followed the position it had had in the
quarry bed.

This chapter cannot be closed on the subject of the

“secret” without a word about the origin of the signs
which today permit freemasons to recognize one another.
The builders of French or English cathedrals never
needed secret grips or signs to recognize a fellow builder.
_ According to Knoop and Jones, this custom was born in
Scotland where special conditions in working stone caused
highly specialized workers to adopt secret means of
knowing one another. In part, these conditions were due
to the existence of a category of apprentices, the “entered
apprentice,” not found anywhere else, and to the absence
of freestone in Scotland. Scottish workers capable of
cutting this quality stone were faced with the impossi-
bility of proving their skill, and constant competition
from less skilled workers called cowans who originally
built dry-stone walls. To prevent cowans from being
hired for, work at which they were not qualified,
stonecutters decided to adopt signs of recognition known
only to themselves. In a document from the Mother
Kilwinning lodge in 1707 there is proof of what was
done: “No mason will give work to a cowan without the
password... .”
These signs of recognition were known to exist in six-
teenth-century freemasonry and must have been carried
over into Scottish honorary freemasonry as it developed
in the seventeenth century. The custom was then trans-
mitted from Scotland to England. Reciprocally, masonic
constitutions went from England into Scotland, where
they had been unknown originally.
Due to many archives and incised inscriptions we know
the names and works of several of the great thirteenth-
century cathedral builders. In a previous chapter the
text of the Amiens labyrinth was cited. There are found
the names of the three architects who succeeded each
other from 1220 to 1288 in directing the works of that
cathedral: Robert de Luzarches, Thomas de Cormont,
and his son Regnault. The inscription of the Reims
r 133

1euil-sur-Avre: tombstone of a master mason(?)

labyrinth showed that the choir begun in 1211 was the
work of Jean d’Orbais; the work was continued by Jean
Le Loup and Gaucher de Reims. The fagade and the
great rose were the work of Bernard de Soissons, who
worked there about thirty-five years between 1255 and
1290. This Bernard de Soissons had a rather good income
because in 1287, in a register of the tax assessments
levied to pay for the coronation of Philippe le Bel, he
was taxed in two parishes: in that of Saint-Denis for five
sous and in: that of Saint-Symphorien for one hundred
sous.
Also known is the name of the very talented architect
of the beautiful Church of Saint-Nicaise at Reims, now
destroyed. Like a great many other architects, he had
the honor of being buried in the church he had built.
On his tombstone is written: “Here lies Master Hugues
Libergier who began this church in the year of the Incar-
nation 1229 on Easter Tuesday and who died in the year
of the Incarnation 1263 the Friday after Easter. Pray to
God for him.” This tombstone is now in the cathedral
where it can be admired, and observed that Hugues
Libergier, dressed in a long robe, holds the instruments
of his profession: a square, a compass with crossed arms,
and a graduated rule.

Notre-Dame de Paris: fragment of the inscription on the south transept

 Another celebrated tombstone is that which honors in
particularly remarkable terms the memory of Pierre de
Montreuil, the architect who reconstructed the nave and
transepts of Saint-Denis. He also built the refectory of the
Abbey of Saint-Germain-des-Prés and the Lady Chapel
at that same abbey, in which he was buried. This is his
epitaph:

Here lies Pierre de Montreuil, a perfect flower of

good manners, in his life a doctor of stones. [O] that
the King of Heaven will conduct [him] to the highest
of poles!

It will be noted that he was given a “university” title:

Doctor of Stones (doctor lathomorum).
Even after his death, Pierre de Montreuil’s prestige
was so great that his wife was honored by being buried
in the chapel at his side. Proof also of the esteem paid
to women of humble origin is contained in her epitaph:
“Here lies Anne, formerly the wife of the late master
Pierre de Montreuil. Pray God for her soul.”
Still another epitaph praised the architect of the thir-
teenth-century choir of the abbey church of Saint-Etienne
in Caen: “Here lies Guillaume, very elevated in the art
of stones, who accomplished this new work.”
But by far the most astonishing inscription is that
which is cut over a distance of some twenty-five feet
along the lower jambs of the south transept of Notre-
Dame de Paris. It tells who created this transept: “Master
Jehan de Chelles commenced this work for the glory of
the Mother of Christ on the second of the Ides of the
month of February 1258.” What nineteenth- or twen-
tieth-century architect has been honored by having his
name inscribed in such a remarkable manner on a
building he has built?
It ought to be noted that all these inscriptions date
from the second or last third of the thirteenth century.
By that time the architect was fully aware of his worth,
and the thirteenth century probably witnessed a change
in the architect’s status: an architect no longer partici-
pated manually in the operation of the workshop. Indeed,
he diverted work from himself. The words of Nicolas de
Biard in the middle of the century testify to this change.
This preacher was enraged to see men of “a mechanical
art” no longer doing manual labor. He wrote that in the
larger workshops

it was the custom to have a principal master who gave

only oral orders, was very rarely on the job, or never
used his hands, although he received a much larger
salary than the others. ... The masters of the masons,
carrying a baguette and gloves, ordered others to “cut
it for me there” and worked not at all, although they
received a larger payment; it is this way with many
modern prelates.

The word magister, which precedes the words cemen-

tarius and lathomus, frequently indicated an architect,
although not always. The word magister, or “master,”
was, moreover, borrowed by the mechanical arts from
the liberal arts. Originally, magister applied only to those
who had completed the study of the liberal arts. In the
thirteenth century Doctors of Law were moved to anger
because carpenters adopted this honorary title with no
right to it. Magister operis is very often translated as
“master of the works,” an expression that sounds very
medieval but which is unhappily incorrect. This ex-
pression is not, like “architect,” a word designating a
professional man. One is master of the works of such
and such a church or such and such a great lord. For
example, one could be master of the royal masonry
works. Magister operis can designate an architect but it
136

Strasbourg Cathedral, facade: plan “B” and the present facade (over)
can also indicate a foreman or overseer. In England the
master of the works is very often a functionary designated
by the king to supervise works in progress. The architect
is he who conceives the plan and draws up specifications,
creative work that must have been executed in a “draft-
ing room” that was probably reserved for the architect
and his assistants.
During the whole period of the cathedral crusade
architects do not seem to have made wood or plaster
models. This ancient means of showing edifices seems
to have survived for a time in the early Middle Ages and
then disappeared for several centuries only to reappear
during the Renaissance. There are unhappily very few
plans left from the early Middle Ages. Villard de Honne-
court’s Sketchbook. includes elevations but they are
designs executed as a basis for later works rather than
original working plans. Villard drew the ground plans
of three churches: the Abbey of Vaucelles, Notre-Dame
of Cambrai, and Meaux Cathedral. But these are not
complete, precise plans.
How can one-explain the absence of documents as
fundamental as plans? It must be remembered that there
was no particular reason for saving plans of completed
buildings; and even today it is difficult to obtain plans
of important buildings erected in the early part of this
century. No one has seen any reason for saving them.
Also, earlier medieval plans must often have been exe-
cuted on sheets of plaster or wooden planks. The high
cost of parchment perhaps prohibited its use as a drawing
material. It is only by chance that so many fourteenth-
and fifteenth-century parchment plans are preserved, or
is it rather because this material cost less then?
The best known thirteenth-century designs are the
Reims Palimpsest ® and the plans from the Strasbourg
Cathedral. In 1838 original plans dating from about
1250 were found in a manuscript at Reims belonging to
the cathedral chapter. ,The writing which covers at least
half of these plans dates no later than 1270. Parchment
was very expensive and it was used over and over again.
One of the designs which has been read, although it is
under more recent writing, shows the elevation of a
large church. This design, which John Harvey believes
139
can be attributed to Hugues Libergier or one of his
collaborators, has this remarkable feature: its author,
having drawn a vertical axis through the middle of the
facade, drew only broad outlines on the right half while
showing details on the left.
The Museum of the Fabric at Strasbourg possesses a
series of very interesting designs. The first, called “A,”
represents the first project for the Strasbourg Cathedral
and must have been executed around 1275. There is a
second design, called “B,” which is a copy of “A” with
the addition of the decorative elements executed on the
facade toward 1300.
Detailed specifications such as those drawn up in 1284
for the reconstruction of the Church of the Cordeliers
[Gray Friars] at Provins served to complete plans. It has
been observed that in the Middle Ages plans were only
very rarely numbered. Note that in the following extract
from this specification the measurements of certain
elements are given in feet:

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of

the Holy Spirit. Amen. This is the specification for the
Convent of the Minor Brothers of Provins. First, the
convent will be razed to the ground. And the [new]
front gable and the side will be of the same dimensions
that they were before, so that the side of the aisle will
be on round pillars and on arches of cut stone the
length of the old aisle. And the voussoirs of these
arches will have a height which will require a sepa-
ration so as to rejoin the entablature which supports
the framework of the nave [roof]; and there will be
on this side as many arches as there are bays between
two tie-rods as the length of the old aisle required,
and these arches will be of the dimensions required
by the framework. And there will be at the springing
of these arches to the gable on the side of the court-
yard a buttress projecting six feet and with three
bonded feet which will be tied in to a beveled facing
above the support for the gable.

Nicolas de Biard was right when he maintained that

the “principal master” received a much larger salary
140

Notre-Dame de Paris: statue of Viollet-le-Duc at the southeast ancle of th

Ee
than the others; but he should not have been offended
by it, for it is quite normal that men capable of directing
a workshop, drawing plans, and establishing specifications,
have a social and financial status higher than that of the
masons and stonecutters.
Chapters found themselves in the position of applicants
for the services of these exceptional men who embodied
so many moral qualities and so much technical knowledge.
The number of men who possessed this combination of
qualities and knowledge was of course limited. It became

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necessary to retain architects by contracts advantageous
to them. Even so, it was only hoped at the same time
that they could be kept from going to other workshops
during the duration of their contract. Architects would
not always accept this clause restricting their freedom.
Architects obviously profited from this privileged
position to determine their own working conditions. The
most amusing case — and also one of the most extreme —
is the contract extracted from the Archbishop of Lugo
by the architect Raymond in 1129. Pierre du Colombier
Saint Eloi saves the Church of Saint-Martial from fire (fourteenth century)

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 has observed that in his contract Master Raymond took
pains to insure that in the event currency values were
to drop during the course of his employment as master
of the works at the cathedral, he would be paid princi-
pally in kind. To wit, he was to receive each year six
silver marks, thirty-six meters of silk, seventeen loads of
wood, as many shoes and gaiters as he needed, and two
sous each months for his food, plus one measure of salt
and one pound of candlewax.
The advantages of payment in kind were numerous.
More often than not architects were housed gratis. They
were given “robes,” occasionally made of fur, and they
could be made exempt from taxation. In addition to all
these advantages, they were often given a bonus at the
. end of the year. They could be engaged by the year,
for the duration of the workshop oor, rarely, for life, in
which case provision was made for breaking the contract
if the master were to become an invalid.
Architects also bettered their financial situation by
giving expert advice. Following the collapse of a vault,
or after a fire, a chapter often decided to call together
at a fixed date some of the better known architects before
repairing the damage or rebuilding. These experts would
carefully survey the damage and then together draw up
their conclusion. The chapter, after having properly
housed and fed them, paid them considerable sums com-
pared to what architects received annually.
Thanks to beneficial contracts and these surveys,
architects became rich enough to buy houses. It was
noted above that Bernard de Soissons owned two houses
at Reims. They bought quarries and occasionally sold
stone. for the work on the cathedral where they were
employed. Litlle by little certain of them established
themselves as contractors although apparently they could
accept only the operation of small workshops. The
contracts for these small projects were awarded, just as
today, to the lowest bidder.
Risking their livelihood, architects became urbanists
and drew up plans for new cities, adopting circular plans
like that of Bram in Languedoc, or grids like that of
Aigues-Mortes. Some specialized in constructing fortified
chateaux, others in the construction of bridges. The legend
144
 Maures (Cantal): a circular city

of pontifical brothers going from one city to another to

build bridges is much more romantic than factual. Numer-
ous archives relate legal transactions or agreements con-
cerning bridge construction but none makes any mention
of the pontifical brothers.
_ Toward the middle of the eleventh century, Abbot
Pons of Aniane signed an agreement with Geffroi, Abbot
of Saint-Guilhem-du-Désert, for the construction of a
bridge over the Hérault. The former undertook to trans-
port all wood, stone, lime, gravel, iron, and lead to the
site and to furnish all the rope required. The latter agreed
to build half the bridge at the expense of the monastery
and to pay the master of the works.
At Arles on the June 15, 1178, forty-one days before
the coronation of the Emperor Frederick in that city,
an agreement was reached between Jean de Manduel and
the people of Arles on one side and the Jews on the other.
The latter were bound to a base service of one hundred
years to contribute every Holy Saturday to construction.
This requirement was replaced by the payment of fifty
sous and an annual fine of twenty sous in the future.
What was true about the legend of the brothers of the
bridge is that there actually were confraternities which
were formed in different cities, independently of one
another, to tax travelers and to assure the upkeep of
bridges and the payment of tolls. The brothers of the
Pont-Saint-Esprit, for example, disappeared only in 1794.
145
 THE MONASTIC BUILDERS

The history of monastic construction is in some ways

quite different from cathedral construction, especially in
connection with workshops, laborers, and the choice of
plans. Yet monastic construction is another important
manifestation of the creative genius of the Middle Ages
close to that of the primary subject of this book. Specific
characteristics of the cathedral builders can be brought
very sharply into focus at the same time that certain
questions of organization common to all types of religious
construction can be explained. Monastic archives add
much unique information to our knowledge of the subject.
The detailed account that the Benedictine monk
Gervase of Canterbury wrote on the reconstruction of
the church choir, following the fire of 1174, is particu-
larly moving and informative. Thanks to this single
document, life in a twelfth-century monastic workshop
can be relived. Immediately after the fire the monks at
Canterbury took measures to have the damage repaired
and called in various experts:

French and English artificers were therefore

summoned, but even these differed in opinion. On
the one hand, some undertook to repair the aforesaid
columns without mischief to the walls above. On the
other hand, there were some who asserted that the
whole church must be pulled down if the monks wished
to exist in safety. This opinion, true as it was, excruci-
ated the monks with grief, and no wonder, for how
147

Fixing the limits of the plan of Cluny (twelfth century)

 could they hope that so great a work should be com-
pleted in their days by any human ingenuity. *

It is of special interest that the monks did not have

in their community any “builders.” They engaged a
French architect, Guillaume de Sens, who, like Villard
de Honnecourt a century later, was an expert in masonry
and carpentry.

However, amongst the other workmen there had

come a certain William of Sens, a man active and
ready, and as a workman most skillful both in wood
and stone. Him, therefore, they retained, on account
of his lively genius and good reputation, and dismissed
the others.... And he, residing many days with the
monks and carefully surveying the burnt walls in their
upper and lower parts, within and without, did yet
for some time conceal what he found necessary to be
done, lest the truth. should kill them in their present
state of pusillanimity. But he went on preparing all
things that were needful for the work, either of him-
* All quotations from Gervase’s account from The Reverend Robert Willis,
The Architectural History of Canterbury Cathedral, London, Longmans & Co.,
W. Pickering, and G. Bell, 1845, Ch. 111, 32-62.

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 self or by the agency of others. And when he found
that the monks began to be somewhat comforted, he
ventured to confess that the pillars rent with the fire
and all that they supported must be destroyed if the
monks wished to have a safe and excellent building.
At length they agreed, being convinced by reason and
wishing to have the work as good as he promised, and
above all things to live in security; thus they consented
acing h if not willingly, to the destruction of the
choir.

Once the monks admitted the necessity of pulling down

the old burned choir, Guillaume de Sens could get the
stone required for the reconstruction: “He addressed him-
self to the procuring of stone from beyond the sea.” He
had a stone purchased that he knew well, that from
“Caen, which was one of the best available in the Middle
Ages. Even today it is highly regarded across the Channel
and was used in a London building project in 1955.
’ Awaiting the arrival of the stone, Guillaume became
an engineer: “He constructed ingenious machines for
loading and unloading ships, and for drawing [hoisting]
cement and stone.” Villard de Honnecourt was there-
fore not unique; the architects of the Middle Ages were
all but forced to be engineers. Guillaume occupied
himself at the same time in furnishing templates for the
stonecutters — a work often delegated to a specialist called
a “dresser,” who worked with a large compass called a
“dresser’s compass.” In fact, architects and dressers were
often confused in the Middle Ages, the former repre-
sented in certain illuminated manuscripts holding one of
these large compasses. According to a modern stone-
cutting manual, the dresser traced working drawings,
rendered on his plans vault, archivolt, and intrados
templates with which he shaped his stones. They were
then cut and dressed on all sides by the stonecutters
under his direction. °
Pierre du Colombier has added to this:

He [the dresser] even prepared the area or surface

on which he outlined in large scale the face of a vault
or some other piece of work with all its projections. "°
149

Canterbury: plan of the water system

eat
*
 While everything was being readied to rebuild the
church, the old choir was pulled down, a dangerous task
begun by pike-men (piqueurs), specialists infrequently
mentioned in the texts: “The choir thus condemned to
destruction was pulled down, and nothing else was done
that year.”
Here Gervase interrupts his narrative of life in the
workshop to describe the old choir, then begins again his
account of the construction year by year:
The Master began, as I stated long ago, to prepare
all things necessary for the new work, and to destroy
the old. In this way the first year was taken up. In
the following year, that is, after the feast of St. Bertin
(Sept. 5, 1175), before the winter, he erected four
pillars, that is, two on each side, and after the winter
two more were placed, so that on each side were three
in order, upon which and upon the exterior wall of
the aisles he framed seemly arches and a vault, that
is, three claves [bays] on each side.... With these
works the second year was occupied. In the third year
he placed two pillars on each side, the two extreme
ones of which he decorated with marble columns
placed around them, and because at that place the
choir and crosses were to meet, he constituted these
principal pillars.... In the summer [of the fourth
year], commencing from the cross, he erected ten pillars,
that is, on each side five... and he was, at the be-
ginning of the fifth year, in the act of preparing with
machines for the turning of the great vault, when
suddenly the beams broke under his feet, and he fell
to the ground, stones and timbers accompanying his
fall, from the height of the capitals of the upper vault,
that is to say, of fifty feet.
Crippled by the fall, Guillaume was bedridden. The
accident proves that in the second half of the twelfth
century architects were still ““on the job,” working manu-
ally as the work progressed, despite Nicolas de Biard’s
comments. The master stayed in bed under medical care
but his health did not improve:
Nevertheless, as the winter approached, and it was
151

rbury: choir built by Guillaume de Sens

 necessary to finish the upper vault, he gave charge of
the work to a certain ingenious and industrious monk,
who was the overseer of the masons; an appointment
whence much envy and malice arose, because it made
this young man appear more skilful than richer and
more powerful ones. But the master reclining in bed
commanded all things that should be done in order.
And thus was completed the ciborium between the four
principal pillars. In the keystone of this ciborium the
choir and the crosses seem as it were to meet. Two
ciboria on each side [the vaults of the eastern transept]
were formed before the winter; when heavy rains
stopped the work. In these operations the fourth year
was occupied and the beginning of the fifth.... And
the master, perceiving that he derived no benefit from
the physicians, gave up the work, and crossing the
sea, returned to his home in France. And another suc-
ceeded him in the charge of the works; William by
name, English by nation, small in body, but in work-
manship of many kinds acute and honest.

The technical knowledge acquired by the young monk

during the several years he had been in direct contact
with the work obviously was insufficient to permit him
to take sole charge of the fabric after Guillaume de Sens
returned to France.
Unfortunately, there were never schools of stonecutters
or architects in the orders which could assure the building
of monasteries without outside help.

He [William the Englishman] in the summer of

the fifth year finished the cross on each side, that is,
the south and the north [transepts], and turned the
ciborium which is above the great Altar, which the
rains of the previous year had hindered, although all
was prepared. . . . Thus was the fifth year employed and
the beginning of the sixth. In the beginning of the sixth
year after the fire, and at the time when the works
were resumed, the monks were seized with a violent
longing to prepare the choir, so that they might enter
it at the coming Easter. And the master, perceiving
their desires, set himself manfully to work, to satisfy
152
 the wishes of the monas-
tery. ... They [the monks]
had remained in the nave
of the church five years,
seven months, and thirteen
days. And returned into
the new choir in the year
of grace .1180, in the
month of April, on the
nineteenth day of the
month, at about the ninth
hour of Easter Eve....
And thus was the sixth
year employed, and a part
of the seventh... which,
in short, included the com-
pletion of the new and
handsome crypt, and a-
bove the crypt the exterior
walls of the aisles up to
their marble capitals....
In the eighth year the mas-
ter erected eight interior
pillars, and turned the
arches and the vault....
He also raised the tower
up to the bases of the high-
est windows under the
vault. In the ninth year no
work was done for want
of funds.

If a monastery as rich and

as powerful as Canterbury
lacked funds for a whole
year to pay workers and buy
materials, it can easily be
understood that the building
of more modest monasteries,
parish churches, or cathe-
drals might require several
centuries.
” 453
 In the tenth year the upper windows of the tower,
together with the vault, were finished.... The tower
was covered in, and many other things done this year
[1184].

Thus concludes Gervase’s account. With but one ex-

ception, the monks took -no part in the actual recon-
struction of their choir. But this is not an unusual case.
In England some decades ago, G. G. Coulton questioned
the active role of monks as builders, a thesis which
occasioned heated debates in various large trade publi-
cations. Coulton accused Montalembert’s work Les
Moines d’Occident (written in the nineteenth century) of
having been the origin of what he called the legend of
the builder monks. The Coulton “school” continued this
polemic for some time. Today tempers are calm and it
is easier to see the truth although it must not be forgotten
that this is one of the most complex problems of medieval
architecture.
Apologists defending Montalembert’s thesis have often
turned to the early twelfth-century writer Orderic Vitalis
who wrote that “all Cistercian monasteries are built in
clearings in the midst of forests and the religious build
them with their own hands.” But this must be cited
cautiously. In the first place, Vitalis cited the Cistercians,
not the Benedictines, as being builders; and, in the second
place, so far as the Cistercians were concerned, the term
“the religious” included hired laborers — lay workers —
as well as the brothers themselves. Any history of mo-
nastic construction is complicated by this situation which
cannot be clarified unless the differences between the
Benedictines and the Cistercians are listed. Then, so far
as the Cistercians themselves are concerned, a distinction
must be made between work done by the brothers and
by hired laborers.
To understand the differences between the two orders,
one must return to St. Benedict’s Rule. Concerning con-
struction it is mute, however: there is not one word about
it. The mission of the monk is to consecrate his life to
God through meditation, prayer, and offices. The Rule
organized his life for God’s work. Manual labor was
encouraged only in as much as it contributed to that end,
154

Buckfast Abbey: lay brothers at work

and then only “regulated in consideration for the weak.”
Harvesting — very hard work — could be done only as an
exception. The-.Rule encouraged such work as gardening
or that carried on in workshops. The spirit of the Rule
did not anticipate the hard work of the quarryman, the
stonecutter, or the sculptor.
The Benedictine historian Ursmer Berliére confirmed
this when he wrote that

the monastic order, by reason of its constitution which

presupposes a life of solitude, can participate only in
limited measure in great agricultural or manual labors.
And he added that even this measure decreased or even
disappeared with the elevation of members of the order
to the priesthood (monks were not priests in St. Benedict’s
day). ‘4
As monasteries became economically and socially more
important, farming and such manual labor as house-
cleaning were entrusted to servants (famuli, canonici,
matricularii, ministerales) who frequently made up a con-
siderable part of a cloister’s population. It was a useful
and advantageous situation for freemen or serfs.
In the eleventh century reformers in southern Ger-
many and Italy had the idea of making religious brothers
out of these layman, and they came to be called fréres
convers (“converted brothers” or “working brothers’’).
This solution had the advantage of preventing frequent
contact by monks with the outside world, a contact
harmful to meditation and the spiritual life. The idea
of laborers attached to the orders was revived and
codified by Citeaux, which published in 1119 the “uses
and customs” of its working brothers. Henceforth, there
were two categories of the religious: monks, who conse-
crated themselves .entirely to a spiritual or intellectual
life, and working brothers who did physical tasks. These
latter had to take vows of poverty, chastity, and obedi-
ence, but they could never become priests or monks. They
had their own refectory and dormitory, and worked as
farmers, shoemakers, stonecutters, tanners, blacksmiths,
and masons. Through the work done by their working
brothers, the Cistercians did play a part in the construction
156
 of their monasteries, but the history of the reconstruction
of Clairvaux and the stonecutters’ marks found in Cister-
cian buildings prove nonetheless that they must have
called in outside constructors.
It is not without interest to study the construction of
a twentieth-century monastery to understand certain
- problems of the past. The Benedictines today have
adopted the Cistercian practice of using fréres convers.
At the beginning of this century, the Benedictine monks
of Buckfast Abbey in Devonshire, having discovered the
original twelfth-century Cistercian foundations, decided
to rebuild their church. The abbot had no “builder”
among his working brothers so he sent a young frére
convers, Brother Peter, to the Abbey of En Calcat in
France to learn some of the fundamentals of masonry
from the specialists who were rebuilding that abbey.
Brother Peter returned to England at the end of eighteen
months and worked in the workshop day after day for
thirty-two years. Today he is seventy-six years old and
his hands have been burned by lime from his often diffi-
cult work. Seeing his hands thus scarred makes it clear
why workshop foremen during the Middle Ages regularly
bought gloves for their masons.
Brother Peter taught the rudiments he had learned
at En Calcat to four or five working brothers. They
worked primarily as cementers and masons and, in ex-
ceptional cases, stonecutters, a profession requiring a
very long apprenticeship. When funds were available
stones were bought already cut at the quarry.
The abbot, conforming to the “uses and customs” of
the working brothers, gave them dispensations from
certain offices. They had only to attend the first office
in the morning and Complines at night. Thus the fréres
convers were able to work without interruption from
morning until night. The number of working brothers
the abbot could assign to the workshop was limited by
the very life of the monastery. In assigning too many
of these brothers to the work, he risked disrupting the
regularity of the monastic routine so indispensable to
meditation and the divine service. It seemed necessary
that one-third of the community be working brothers in
order for a Benedictine monastery to operate smoothly.
157
Statistics published by the papacy in 1935 seem to con-
firm this ratio. Of about ten thousand Benedictines,
thirty-three per cent were, or were destined to be, work-
ing brothers. The problem of recruiting these working
brothers is as acute today in prosperous countries such
as England as it was at the end of the thirteenth century
in western Europe.
To supervise the fréres convers, the abbot asked for a
volunteer from among the monks. Father Richard, who
agreed to be the “Father-constructor,’ is now seventy-
nine years old and has paid dearly for his physical efforts
during so many years. He had no dispensation from
attending morning offices. Frederick Walters, a lay archi-
tect, was called in to draw the plans and give professional
supervision to the works. At Buckfast Abbey there were
no monks who had studied architecture before taking
orders as these were in some other contemporary monas-
teries.
When it was known that the monks at Buckfast were
beginning to rebuild their monastery, gifts flowed in which
accelerated the work. The roofing and carpentry were
done by specialists from the outside. Generous donors
offered a gold high altar, the stations of the cross, and
the choir stalls. The monks themselves were busy: while
some of the fathers such as Dom John Stephen, the abbey
historian, continued their intellectual studies, others, such
as Dom Norris, prepared to paint the immense fresco
which now decorates the ceiling of the lantern tower.
The church was finished in 1936. If Dom Robert had
then been a monk at Buckfast, he probably would have
executed a tapestry for the church. Buckfast Abbey is
now one of the most famous and most frequently visited
places in England, thanks to the working brothers’ con-°
struction and the monks’ decoration.
The reconstruction of the monastery of Landevennec
at the extreme end of Brittany, under way since 1950,
clearly exposes the advantages and disadvantages of
voluntary labor. The Bishop of Quimper wrote a pastor-
al letter bringing to the attention of his diosecans the
Abbot of Kerbénéat’s project to rebuild Landevennec
Abbey. He invited them to welcome the fathers who
passed through the parish. The parish priests exerted
158
themselves to discuss the Benedictine project from the
pulpit. They requested volunteers to help the monks dig
and terrace the ground at Landevennec to make way for
the reconstruction of the church and adjoining buildings.
The Breton population responded with faith to this appeal,
and groups of farmers could be seen leaving their homes
during the winter months from December to February to
participate in this good work. Parishioners with their
tools left before dawn in groups of twenty to fifty in
order to be on the site at Landevennec by dawn and
returned to their village only at nightfall.
It is plausible that volunteers in the Middle Ages did
the same thing in winter, yet it appears equally improba-
ble that peasants could have left the fields during the
harvest. This benevolent work at Landevennec was, as
in the Middle Ages, essentially base labor, although it
was no less important for this reason. Indeed, this aid
was particularly appreciated at Landevennec because it
came at a time when the monks had scarcely sufficient
funds to offer laborers any part. It has been estimated
that nearly twelve hundred working days were put in by
these volunteers.
Along with this appeal for volunteer labor, the abbot
organized, with the cooperation of the cities and towns
in the Diocese of Quimper, a great charity fair in‘which
the population actively participated. With the funds thus
obtained the monks were able to engage a constructor
from Landerneau for the actual construction of the abbey.
In 1958, scarcely eight years after the first call for help,
the brothers of Kerbénéat were able to reoccupy the
venerable site of Landevennec, through the active help
of the people of Brittany.
Proven methods used to realize Le Corbusier’s plans

Chapelle Notre-Dame du Haut- Ronchamp

Financement de la Construction ;

PARTICIPATION DE 100 Fr.

oe Ne, 007279
Berth
ays —re
Cee
 The history of technology proves that the cathedral
builders were active participants in Europe’s first in-
dustrial revolution. The history of technology is a recent
study, and few historians are as yet involved with the
fascinating problems it raises. This history is different
from that of the sciences, which have been very much
studied. Unhappily, the history of science is of more
limited interest for a knowledge of the past, for few
societies have been scientific although all, without ex-
ception, have been technical.
The degree of a nation’s inventiveness seems bound
up with certain laws. The pattern develops much faster
when a society is growing, when that society is intel-
lectually stimulated and founding its ideals. The pattern
slows down when the society, having reached maturity
and prosperity, fears changes which could bring with
them new technology.
Natural sources of power are, today as yesterday, the
basis of a nation’s industrial power. The three principal
sources of power during the ascendant period of the
Middle Ages were water, wind, and the horse. Their
importance cannot be overestimated. Economic life today
would come to a halt without gasoline; without water
power, the life of the Middle Ages is unthinkable.
The water mill was known in Asia Minor in the first
century B.c., but it was not fully exploited then because
of climatic and hydrological conditions in the Mediter-
ranean basis, the true center of ancient civilization. The
mills at Barbegal in Provence, operated at great expense,
are an example of the great difficulty the Roman world
had in utilizing water power.
161

bury: plan of the water system

 The expansion of water mills in the high Middle Ages
stemmed in part from the presence of a denser network
of rivers and the regular, annual floods in the far north,
and also in part, after the tenth century, from a very
heavy demographic expansion. During this later epoch
there was a considerable multiplication of water mills.
In 1086 William the Conqueror counted five thousand
of them in England, and by the thirteenth century there
were tens of thousands of them in France. In cities
enormous works were undertaken to dig canals by which
mills could be installed. In the country all the rivers were
regulated. Water power was advantageous because it
was available everywhere. In Toulouse, city engineers
succeeded, despite the rapid, often violent current and
rising water, in throwing a great embankment nine
hundred feet, long against the river, diverting its course
diagonally to create a waterfall powerful enough to
operate the mills at Bazacle. To finance the construction
of this causeway and for the upkeep of such a titanic
work, a great sum of money had to be collected. The
city’s businessmen set up a company on shares. Each
stockholder then shared in the losses and gains prorated
according to his investment.
The introduction of water mills into the system of
seignorial rights brought forth a ban on manually oper-
ated mills.
Thanks to the intervention of the cam shaft, rotary
movement was transformed into reciprocal movement,
and thus hydraulic power could not only grind grain, but
could be used to card wool, make beer, reduce oak bark
to powder for tanning, forge iron, and make paper.
It seems inconceivable that the word “artisan” was
used to designate the men who built and operated those
machines which in large measure replaced manual labor.
It sufficed then, as now, to have a clutch to disengage
moving gears. If we decide to continue using the word
“artisan” for the Middle Ages, we will certainly have to
resign ourselves to the fact that in the year 2500, when
automation reigns supreme, our industry - of which we
are so proud — will be considered just as artisan-like.
From the twelfth century on innumerable windmills
were built to profit from the inexhaustible Aeolian energy.
162
 GES ae
—a nO
UA we

ee — S

Manuscript of Herrade de Landsberg (twelfth century)

Even mills activated by the sea-tide were built. The

Middle Ages preceded the electricity of France in this
domain.
The horse was a source of considerable power for the
Middle Ages. Cathedral workshops profited directly from
it. Maximum capacity of the horse was achieved for the
first time in the history of the world. This better use
was due to the combjned use of a series of inventions.
To protect its feet, it was shod; the large-stone roads of
the Romans were replaced by more yielding paving.
Harnesses were changed: the girth, which had been placed
at the horse’s throat, was modified to become a shoulder
collar which permitted a more efficient use of the animal’s
strength, a system which, moreover, had the advantage
163
of permitting horses to be hitched together in teams one
behind another. Oxen which were slow and difficult to
manage were then frequently abandoned. The horse thus
contributed to a rapid rise in the Western world in the
development of uncultivated land, and in the execution
of much construction work by bringing building material
right to the foot of the project.
Paralleling the development of these sources of power,
all human activities progressed. Weaving was perfected
and the spinning-wheel invented. Iron was made stronger;
wheels were made to turn easier; the mechanical pendu-
lum was invented. Experimental agriculture was prac-
ticed; artesian wells were dug; crop production increased;
vineyards were improved. Compasses and post-rudders
were adopted. Chimneys were built and coal burned;
wax candles provided light. The fork was conceived;
glasses were worn; the mirror appeared. Paper was made.
Their writings testify that the men of this epoch were
conscious of the advantages of technics. The author of a
Cistercian report observed that the disciplined use of the
forces of nature frees the laborer from the burdensome
mechanical labor that a machine could do. The Francis-
can monk Bartholomew understood the importance of
iron not only for war but also for agriculture and con-
struction. In 1260 he wrote:
164
 From numerous points of view iron is more useful
to man than gold, even though the covetous desire
gold more than iron. Without iron man could not
defend himself against his enemies or enforce commu-
nal law; the righteous assure their [enemies’] defeat
by means of iron, and the dishonesty of the wicked is
punished with iron. Also, all manual labor demands
the use of iron without which land cannot be cultivated
or houses built.
This technical achievement was possible only because
medieval society believed in progress and did not cling
to outmoded traditions. It could and did improve its
conditions. Said Gilbert de Tournai:
Never will we find truth if we content ourselves
with what is already known.... Those things which
have been written before us are not laws but guides.
The truth is open to all, for it is not yet totally pos-
sessed.
Emile Bréhier, in his Philosophie du Moyen-A ge, wrote
that this freedom regarding authority, which at least
manifests itself in the precise and rational choice of a
thesis, is joined to a belief in the possibility of progress
which without doubt made itself clear for the first time
in the Middle Ages. John of Salisbury, having cited
Abélard’s statement that a modern man was capable of
composing a dialectic which owed nothing to the ancients,
added to this what Bernard (Master of the episcopal
school at Chartres from 1114 to 1119) had said:
We are as dwarfs mounted on the shoulders of
giants, so that although we perceive many more things
than they, it is not because our vision is more piercing
or our stature higher, but because we are carried and
elevated higher thanks to their gigantic size.
The cathedral builders, working in a society that recog-
nized progress, were inventive, and the cathedral at the
end of the thirteenth century was the result of hundreds
of innovations and more or less important perfections
due to the constructors’ spirit of research.
Most of the trades developed simultaneously, and often
165
the progress of some helped
the development of others.
For example, progress by the
blacksmiths aided architects,
sculptors, and stonecutters.
Indeed, blacksmiths were ca-
thedral builders in that they
made stronger steel tools to
cut harder stone, such as that
of Volvic, near Clermont,
which until then had resisted
man. Also, after this, sculp-
tors were able to carve more
delicate images from stone.
The use of the harder stones
meant that architects could
design thinner walls and col-
umns of a smaller diameter.
Tools, being harder, re-
quired less sharpening. A
blacksmith’s equipment con-
sisted of a forge, an assistant,
an ax-case, a laborer charged
with collecting tools to be
sharpened and_ returning
them, and a laborer charged
with feeding the forge coal
and wood. Unhappily, little
is known about the origin and
the social situation of these
blacksmiths, who must have
formed a group separate from
other builders. ‘There was a
forge at the workshop and in
each of the quarries being
used. At Autun about ten per
cent of the expenditures were
expenses of the forge: “To
the forge of Autun, for the
year, 42 livres 10 sous 6
deniers.... To the forge at
the quarry, 3 livres 2 sous.”
 Blacksmiths not only forged tools, slings (straps of iron
for lifting large stones), nails of all types, horseshoes,
tie-rods (such as those used at Westminster Abbey to
prevent its walls from spreading), but also iron chains
which architects imbedded within the masonry of a wall
as reinforcement.
The architect of Saint-Chapelle put chains through its
walls. Experience has shown that this means of rein-
forcing a building is not the best since it causes ruptures
in- the masonry. Here we find ourselves faced with an
evolution in technique which finally proved not to be
progress. Today architects frequently use new methods
of construction and new materials rashly, but do they
always know their quality? There will doubtless be many
surprises.
The Franciscan cited above had good reason to under-
line the importance of iron in the construction of his
time. Thanks to the blacksmiths, carpenters had at their
disposal perfected tools which permitted the improvement
of carpentry, shoring, and scaffolding.
The technique of sawing timber had not been lost
during the high Middle Ages although the technique of
stonecutting had practically disappeared. Carpenters had
to adapt centering to the evolution of the vault. Thir-
teenth-century centering constructed for the ogival vaults
of the great cathedrals was a true marvel, the result of
multiple perfections.
Carpenters knew how to adapt their skills to the par-
ticular conditions of their locality or time — to the absence
of large beams, for example. Villard de Honnecourt
concerned himself with this problem, and explains how
to construct a tower, a house, or a bridge with small
timber: “How to work on a house or tower even if the
timbers are too short.” “How to make a bridge over
water, with twenty-foot timbers.” In the twelfth century
it was already difficult to find large trees because the
forests had been devastated. Suger recounts with his usual
verve how, despite the contrary advice of specialists,
he discovered in the forest of Iveline, “thanks to God and
the Holy Martyrs,” some trees of a very large diameter,
essential to the reconstruction of. Saint-Denis:

167
 When the work had been finished in great part,
when the stories of the old and new building had been
joined, and when we had laid aside the anxiety we had
long felt because of those gaping cracks in the old
walls, we undertook with new confidence to repair the
damages in the great capitals and in the bases that
supported the columns. But when we inquired both
of our own carpenters and those of Paris where we
might find beams, we were told, as was in their opinion
true, that such could in no wise be found in these
regions owing to the lack of woods; they would in-
evitably have to be brought hither from the district of
Auxerre. All concurred with this view and we were
much distressed by this because of the magnitude of
the task and the long delay of the work; but on a
certain night, when I had returned from celebrating
Matins, I began to think in bed that I myself should
go through all the forests of these parts, look around
everywhere and alleviate those delays and troubles if
[beams] could be found here. Quickly disposing of
other duties and hurrying in the early morning, we
hastened with our carpenters, and with the measure-
ments of the beams, to the forest called Iveline. When
we traversed our possession in the Valley of Chevreuse
we summoned through our servants the keepers of our
own forests as well as men who knew about the other
woods, and questioned them under oath whether we
could find there, no matter with how much trouble,
any timbers of that measure. At this they smiled, or
rather would have laughed at us if they had dared;
they wondered whether we were quite ignorant of the
fact that nothing of the kind could be found in the
entire region, especially since Milon, the Castellan of
Chevreuse (our vassal, who holds of us one half of the
forest in addition to another fief) had left nothing
unimpaired or untouched that could be used for
building palisades and bulwarks while he was long
subjected to wars both by our Lord the King and
Amaury de Montfort. We however — scorning what-
ever they might say — began, with the courage of our
faith as it were, to search through the woods; and
toward the first hour we found one timber adequate
168
 to the measure. Why say more? By the ninth hour
or sooner we had, through the thickets, the depths of
the forests and the dense, thorny tangles, marked down
twelve timbers (for so many were necessary) to the
astonishment of all, especially those on the spot; and
when they had been carried to the sacred basilica, we
had them placed, with exultation, upon the ceiling of the
new structure, to the praise and glory of our Lord Jesus,
Who protecting them from the hands of plunderers,
had reserved them for himself and the Holy Martyrs
as He wished to do. Thus in this matter Divine
generosity, which has chosen to limit and grant all
things according to weight and measure, manifested
itself as neither excessive nor defective; for not one
more [timber] than was needed could be found. *

Medieval carpenters were very skilful in shoring up

constructions, whether by means of underpinning or by
modification of the first floors, and they could intelli-
gently adapt their scaffolding to the particular conditions
* English translation from Panofsky. op. cit.

The Life of Saint Alban (about 1250)

of a given building. In order to construct the circular
keep at Coucy, which had a diameter of about 102 feet,
they had the ingenious idea of attaching a very slightly
inclined spiral ramp to the wall. Wagonloads of material
could be drawn up along this ramp without difficulty.
Thirteenth-century miniatures show the wheelbarrow,
an astonishingly small apparatus, made by carpenters so
one man could do the work of two. Yet the wheelbarrow
is still used extensively in building skyscrapers in the
United States. For a long time attributed to Pascal, this
invention was perhaps the fruit of the imagination of a
simple carpenter of the cathedral crusade.
Roofers, working in direct collaboration with carpen-
ters, were persons of equal importance. One of them,
Master Pierre of Dijon, was housed at Autun in 1294
in a house built at the expense of the fabric. If carpen-
ters had to ‘adapt themselves strictly according to the
evolution of vaults, roofers had to adapt themselves to
changes in supports. In antiquity there was rarely any
need to roof large buildings; but the Middle Ages, de-
veloping in northerly countries, frequently had to develop
covering to protect buildings from rain and snow.
Depending on the region, churches were covered with
tile, lead, or slate. Roman tiles were replaced by large
flat tiles and the lead roofing already employed in the
high Middle Ages was so well planned that it was always
possible to remove a defective piece and easily replace it.
Solid and durable tiles covered churches in the west and
north of France by the end of the twelfth century.
Roofers-knew how to decorate the coverings of their
churches beautifully. Lead was decorated with paintings
appliqued on the metal by means of very active mordants.
Roofers made two-tone mosaics, profiting from the fact
that slate has different reflective values depending on the
side used.
The care and importance attached to the roof are
eloquently proved by the considerable sum (5000 livres)
that Maurice de Sully bequeathed to the cathedral to cover
the superstructure of the choir of Notre-Dame de Paris
with lead. To protect their edifices against rain, archi-
tects realized a network of little trenches. They invented
the gargoyle, a water spout to direct jets of water away
170

Beauvais: flying buttresses

from the walls. To facilitate maintenance of their work,
they created service passages at different levels on the
building and perfected spiral stairways. These passages
and stairs permitted circulation in case of fire. It is well
known that architects began building their churches in
stone to diminish the risk of fire. To vault these edifices
they adopted methods known from antiquity, Byzantium,
or the Orient: broken barrel vaults, cupolas on pen-
dentives or squinches, or groined vaults. They perfected
them to cover larger and larger expanses. In particular,
they had the idea of reinforcing simple groined vaults
with ogives (ribs) that seem to have strengthened the
vault at its weakest points, that is, along the web joints
and at the crown. The ogival, or rib vault, which archi-
tects know to have an amazing plasticity, was a technical
advance, but it is now known that it did not have the
primordial importance so long attributed to it. The con-
struction of this type of vault, which was generalized
by the mid-twelfth century, was made possible by skilled
stonecutters, a better choice of materials, and the use of
a more solid mortar.
The flying buttress, a revolutionary invention of the
twelfth century, not only efficiently counter-buttressed
the ogival vaults, permitting naves to rise higher and
higher, but it saved numerous older vaults which had
threatened to collapse.
In opening larger and larger windows to light church
interiors, architects elevated glassmakers to the first rank
of cathedral builders. Thanks to the monk Theophilus,
we probably know glassmaking best of all medieval crafts.
He introduces himself to us in this manner:

I, Theophilus, an humble priest, servant of the

servants of God, unworthy of the name and profession
of a monk, to all wishing to overcome or avoid sloth
of the mind or wandering of the soul, by useful
manual occupation and delightful contemplation of
novelties, send recompense of heavenly price. ...

Where is the author of a technical tract today who

would preface his work with so much humility and ees
Theophilus continues:
172
 When you shall have reread this often, and have
committed it to your tenacious memory, you shall thus
recompense me for this care of instruction, that as
often as you shall successfully have made use of my
work, you pray for me for the pity of Omnipotent
God, who knows that I have written these things,
which are here arranged, neither through love of
human approbation, nor through desire of temporal
reward, nor have I stolen anything precious or rare
through envious jealousy, nor have I kept back any-
thing reserved for myself alone; but in augmentation
of the honour and glory of His Name, I have con-
sulted the progress and hastened to aid the necessities
of many men. *

These moving passages by the monk Theophilus help

us understand better the spirit with which the cathedral
builders worked. If a certain conseption of progress, a
fruitful, inventive spirit, and particularly favorable eco-
nomic and social conditions were all necessary to the
construction of cathedrals, to make possible such miracles
of stone as Notre-Dame de Paris or Notre-Dame de
Chartres, other conditions of a spiritual order were
equally essential; but, as was indicated above it is im-
possible to cover here this aspect of the subject. To be
complete, such a study would require research far beyond
our competence. But this discretion obviously must not
be interpreted as a negation or depreciation of the spirit-
ual role. The cathedrals testify to inspired wisdom as
much as to ingenious science; it is brought to us through
the pictures in this book.
* Theophilus, An Essay upon Various Arts... Forming an Encyclopedia of
Christian Art of the Eleventh Century, trans. by Robert Hendrie, London,
John Murray, 1847, xlvi and li of the preface.
 THE END OF A WORLD

The creative genius of the cathedral builders expired

at the end of the thirteenth century. The enthusiasm of
the people for the cathedral crusade waned considerably.
The desire to set records which had so passionately raised
naves and spires ever higher toward heaven no longer
inspired constructors. In fact, the maximum possibility
in this domain seems to have been reached: the choir
vaults of Beauvais Cathedral, which were the world’s
tallest, collapsed in 1284. Vivid colors gave way to more
subdued shades. Stained glass windows tended to dis-
appear.
The faith which had been at the base of the cathedral
crusade was no longer so lively. The religious fervor
which had so marvelously propelled the growing Middle
Ages and which had made that time one of the greatest
periods in human history lost its intensity. Roger Bacon,
author of an astonishing teaching reform that could have
rejuvenated medieval Christianity, was thrown into prison.
The freedom of expression that had been honored in the
universities became suspect. Canon law clashed with
Roman law, which legislators called up from the past.
Nationalism made its appearance and papal authority and
prestige decreased. The great monastic orders founded
no new abbeys and could recruit working brothers only
with difficulty.
Eloquent proof of this religous crisis, particularly
significant by reason of the circumstances of its issuance,
is provided by Bishop Guillaume le Maire of Angers,
who had been requested by Pope Clement V to make a
175

Bequvais: vaults of the choir

report on the religious situation in France for the Council
of Vienne in 1311. He painted a dramatic picture of
the situation:

In many places in the kingdom of France there has

been established an irreligious custom or, rather, an
abominable abuse. In effect, it occurs that on Sundays
and other important holy days dedicated to the Majesty
of Heaven, when Christians ought to abstain from all
mercenary works in order to go to church to spend
their time at the divine office and to receive the word
of God, of which they have so great need, from
prelates and others having the right to preach — these
days are chosen for holding fairs, law hearings, and
councils. It even happens that the faithful, having
more of a taste for things of the flesh than of the
spirit, leave the church and its offices to meet in such
places where they practice their business or their legal
affairs. So it follows that on these holy days when
God ought to be adored above all, it is the Devil who
is adored; the churches remain empty; the courts of
justice, taverns, and workshops resound with quarrels,
tumult, and blasphemy; perjuries and crimes of nearly
every kind are perpetrated. It follows that the Law of
God, the articles of faith, and all other things per-
taining to the Christian religion and to the salvation
of the soul are almost totally ignored by the faithful.
God is blasphemed, the Devil is revered. Souls waste
away, the Catholic Faith is wounded.

It is interesting to realize that this document came

from a man who had also called attention to himself in
demanding suppression of the Order of Templars. The
decadence of the “holy army” praised by St. Bernard
was a symptom of the exhaustion of Christianity’s greatest
possibilities. The condemnation of the Templars, al-
though obtained by iniquitous means and for selfish
motives, was at the same time the consequence of a .
certain weakening of the order itself and the shattering
sign of the end of a world.
Parallel to this halt of religious zeal and creative
‘thought, technical progress and economic expansion both
176

Carcassonne
 came to a standstill. All the great medieval inventions
came before the end of the thirteenth century. For
nearly 150 years nothing new was invented; only existing
inventions were perfected, except in the military world
the cannon was created in the fourteenth century. The
magnificent prosperity of the thirteenth century was
approaching its end. Society began to grow rigid and
sclerotic. The middle class that emerged from the first
industrial revolution in Europe, during which faith and
civic pride had contributed to the financing of cathedrals
and hospitals, formed dynasties at the end of the thir-
teenth century and desired the social status quo. They
stinted their donations to the cathedral chapters. Com-
munes bankrupted themselves and lost their liberty to the
expanding royal centralization. Free work and free
competition, responsible for the growing European econo-
my, disappeared to the profit of organized guilds or
corporations which one might say were “patrons ex-
ploiting a monopoly.” Sons succeeded fathers and those
who reached responsible positions were not necessarily
the best qualified or most skillful.
No new cities were founded; land clearing came to a
halt and colonization leveled off.
Inflation increased dangerously and nothing could stop
it. In the course of the Middle Ages there had always
been devaluations; but it appears that the one effected
by Philippe le Bel at the beginning of the fourteenth
century was particularly resented. A charming song of
1313 recalls is:

Il se peut que le roy nous enchante

Premier nous fit vingt de soixante
Puis de vingt, quatre, et dix de trente
... Or et argent tout est perdu,
Ne james n’en sera rendu *
* It seems that the king enchants us
For at first sixty made twenty for us,
Then from twenty, four and from thirty, ten
... Gold and silver, all is lost,
None of it ever to be returned.

The earliest representation of a cannon (1326)

 The beginning of the economic crisis which struck
Europe was announced by the resounding crash of the
great Italian bank of the Scali in 1337.
The Hundred Years’ War began that very year, bring-
ing with it more ruin and misery. Gradually most of the
workshops in France were abandoned, and churches left
unfinished. Workshops for war replaced workshops of
the Faith, building fortresses and fortifications. No longer
was there free circulation from one region to another,
and stone from a particular quarry could not be hauled
long distances. Local stone was used and a knowledge
of different quarries vanished.
The population of builders was decimated by epi-
demics and fighting. Those who survived were nearly all
impressed into war service. There they lost their love of
and skill in, delicate craftsmanship — fortified castles
required nothing more than rough work. The sculptors
of Chartres and Reims cut crude blocks or even made
cannonballs; in these desolate times there was no longer
a place for sculpture. And when the horrible war ended
more than a century later, only a handful of builders
was left in France. They tried to organize themselves
into companies, but these professional organizations
remained isolated from each other.
By contrast, German builders, not involved in the
Hundred Years’ War and its devastations, had continued
to work in the great cathedral shops and succeeded, in
the security of relative peace, in establishing ties between
the corporations or stonecutters’ lodges of far distant
regions. In 1459 the master stonecutters met at Regens-
burg to unify the statutes of different lodges. Thus there
existed in Germany a vast organization of builders in the
middle of the fifteenth century. It seems that this organi-
zation had then reached its apex. Before the end of that
century the architect Roriczer had already broken from
this association by publicly revealing a technique that the
Regensburg assembly had recommended be kept secret.
In the sixteenth century the organization was to be in
danger, but until their disappearance in the seventeenth
and eighteenth centuries, lodges in Germany remained
the meeting places of craftsmen.
In England and Scotland the evolution of lodges was
180

Workshop accident (fourteenth century;

different. Professional lodges tended to become honor-
ary. After the fourteenth century, but especially in the
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, English and Scottish
masons came to accept men who were not builders but
who were interested in the former’s craft for different
reasons and who attended their meetings and formed part
of their membership. This led to the distinction between
working measons and fraternal masons. The earliest
honorary or fraternal masons who joined these pro-
fessional lodges were doubtless clerics ordered by the
king, lords, or ecclesiastics to supervise workshops. The
author of the famous Regius manuscript was such a man.
Then sheriffs or city mayors joined them. Cultured men
interested in geometry could join these lodges to study
the knowledge of architects on the subject — geometry
was one of the seven liberal arts and as such merited
study and respect. Ardent men of letters, antiquarians,
sometimes joined these lodges, perhaps to study ancient
architecture, perhaps hoping to have access to the
knowledge and secrets of the past. The Regius and
Cooke manuscripts, or variations of them which were
read in the lodges, seemed to justify the antiquarians’
interest in the masons’ trade, since these manuscripts had
the cathedral builders descended from those of very early
antiquity, in particular the builders of Solomon’s Temple.
Knoop and Jones have very brilliantly analyzed the
written sources from which imaginative authors took
these legends that frequently came directly from Biblical
or medieval readings.
Little by little the ratio of laborers to cultivated men
in these lodges diminished, and the history of the English
cathedral builders may be considered terminated with
the formation of the Great Lodge of London in 1717.
From then on honorary freemasonry continued to
prosper, and it has been very justly defined by Knoop
and Jones as being a “particular system of ethics clouded
by allegories and illustrated by symbols.”
The end of the cathedral builders in France was less
spectacular. In the course of the sixteenth century they
became masonry contractors for Renaissance architects.
At the end of the Hundred Years’ War, chapters
undertook — with an admirable faith — to try to inspire the
182
 handful of builders who had preserved the old traditions
as well as the whole population to a new cathedral cru-
sade. And for a century, until the wars of religion, canons
obstinately persisted in trying to complete abandoned
cathedrals despite multiple material and spiritual diffi-
culties. They were worthy successors to the great canons
of the twelfth and thirteenth centurries; yet they seem
not to have been conscious that the world around them
had profoundly changed, that the builders were no longer
those of the great epoch, that the people no longer had
the faith which had motivated men during the rise of
_ Christianity.
The spirit of initiative and inventiveness that had made
great the builders of the Middle Ages no longer existed;
these men repeated almost mechanically, without faith
or inspiration, the works of earlier times. They were not
in touch with their own times and they were congealed
in the techniques and forms of a lost time. They were
capable only of varying the decoration of stones on a
skeleton that had been perfected two centuries earlier.
Corporatively organized, builders fought ceaselessly to
defend their rights and privileges, restraining the pious
enthusiasm of the canons. Jealous of their prerogatives,
some builders would not hesitate to have recourse to the
law courts when their rights were challenged. Some seem
to have spent more time in court than at the shop. And no
longer did the most qualified accede to the title of
“master.” The laborer no longer held any hope of be-
coming a master because in the corporation sons suc-
ceeded fathers, nephews succeeded uncles. Chapters
could complain that these worthless nepotists were
debauched, drunken idlers, but they were forced to hire
them. To strengthen themselves, corporations limited
entrance to “mastership,” and different chapters were
consequently led to dispute bitterly for the services of
one architect. :
If the canons were disgusted by the “builders,” they
were even more greatly deceived by the people’s indif-
ference to the House of God. The profound and exalting
faith of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, which had
brought the cathedrals soaring from the earth, no longer
elevated souls or enflamed hearts. Despite the foundation
|
183
of new religious confraternities to collect funds, despite
papal appeals and indulgences accorded to benefactors,
despite episcopal generosity and royal subsidies, the com-
bined sums were never sufficient to finish the work. The
people, without whom nothing great can ever be accom-
plished, no longer responded to appeals on behalf of the
cathedrals. A contemporary report stated with sadness
and resignation that the great undertakings of earlier
times were no longer possible, charity. having been ex-
tinguished

184
|ai

RONOLOGICAL LANDMARKS

General History Architectural History

1031 Accession of Henri I . 1030-1080 Abbey of Conques
1031 Sainte-Marie of
1054 The Greek Schism Ripoll consecrated
1057 Charter of the franchise 1045-1080 Saint-Hilaire at
of Orléans Poitiers
ca. 1050-1150 Le Puy Cathedral
1062-1083 Abbey of the Trinity
at Caen
1063 San Miniato at Flo-
rence consecrated
1065 St. Mary at Cologne
065 Chanson de Roland consecrated
066 Norman conquest of Eng- ca. 1072-1092 Lincoln Cathedral
land

074 Reformatory decrees by

Gregory VII
077 Meeting at Canossa
077 Commune of Cambrai
078 Turkish invasion of Asia
Minor 1078-1128 Cathedral of St.
James at Compos-
tella
085 Toledo falls to Islam ca. 1080-1108 Abbey of Saint-
Benoit-sur-Loire
094 Valencia captured by the
1088-1109 Abbey of Cluny
Cid Campeador Durham Cathedral
1093-1130
095 Urban II preaches the
First Crusade at Cler- 1095-1500 Cathedral of San
mont Marco at Venice
ca. 1096-1132 Abbey of Vézelay
AN
we]
Vie
ANNES

©aato
E
 1098 Foundation of the Cister- 1100 Moissac Cloister
cian order 1101-1128 Angouléme Cat
1099 Jerusalem captured by dral
the Crusaders
1108 Accession of Louis VI

1120-1178 Saint-Front at P.
gueux
1120-1178 Autun Cathedra

1112 St. Bernard enters Cite-

aux
1118 Foundation of the Tem-
plars

1122 Suger becomes abbot of

Saint-Denis 1130-1147 Abbey of Fonte:
1122 Peter the Venerable be- ca. 1130-1147 Tournai Cathedr
comes abbot of Cluny ca. 1133 Sens Cathedral
1126 School of Translators at
Toledo 1137 Narthex of Sa
Denis

ca. 1145 - South tower at

Chartres
ca. 1151 Noyon Cathedra
ca. 1153 Senlis Cathedral
1136 Abélard teaching in Paris ca. 1160 Laon Cathedral
1137 Accession of Louis VII ca. 1160 Cistercian Abbey}
1138 Beginning of rivalry be- Pontigny ‘
tween Guelphs and Gibe- 1163 Cathedral, No
lines Dame de Paris
1145 St. Bernard preaches the
Second Crusade 1175 Canterbury Cai
dral
1152 Eleanor of Aquitaine di-
vorces Louis VII ca. 1194 Bourges Cathedr
1153 Death of St. Bernard 1194 Chartres Cathed

1170
~~]

Martyrdom of St. Thom- 1211 Reims Cithedes

fa
as Becket
1180 Accession of Philip Au-
gustus
1187 Saladin recaptures Jeru-
salem
1189 The Third Crusade

186
 The Fourth Crusade -
Capture of Constantino-
ple
Beginning of the Crusade
against the Albigensians
Battle of Bouvines
Official birth of the Uni-
versity of Paris
Approbation of Minor 1220 Amiens Cathedral
Friars (Franciscans) 1220 Collegial of Sainte-
Gudule at Brussels
Foundation of the Order
of Preaching Friars 1227 Tréves Cathedral
(Dominicans) 1227 Toledo Cathedral
1228 Church of St. Fran-
Death of St. Dominic cis at Assisi
Death of St. Francis 1229 Church of the Jaco-
Accession of St. Louis bins at Toulouse
(Louis IX) 1239 Nave of Saint-Denis
1243 Sainte-Chapelle at
wm A 4 1245
Paris
Westminster Abbey
1247 Beauvais Cathedral
fetates t i, 1248
1250
Cologne Cathedral
Strasbourg Cathe-
dral
41 The Mongols reach Cen- 1250 Upsala Cathedral
tral Europe 1250 Siena Cathedral

Pee 1262 Collegial

Urban
of Saint-
at Troyes

48 St. Louis’ First Crusade

Sp St. Thomas teaching in
Paris
61 End of the Latin empire
in Constantinople
65 Marco Polo’s voyage to
Asia (until 1295)
68 Etienne Boileau’s Guild Limoges Cathedral
Statutes Regensburg Cathe-
70 St. Louis’ Second Cru- dral
sade. He dies in Tunis Rodez Cathedral
Condemnation of Thom-, Albi Cathedral
ism and Averroism Choir vaults of
The Sicilian Vespers Beauvais Cathedral
collapse
Accession of Phillippe
IV, le Bel
Surrender of St. Jean
d’Acre
Death of Roger Bacon
187
BIBLIOGRAPHY

[Note: Paperback editions are indicated by (P).]

I. MEDIEVAL LIFE

Coulton, G. G. Life in the Middle Ages, 4 vols. New York, 1931.

Haskins, C. H. The Renaissance of the Twelfth Century. New
York, 1957. (P)
Haskins, C. H. The Rise of Universities. Ithaca, 1957. (P)
Huizinga, J. The Waning of the Middle Ages. Harmondsworth,
1955, New York, 1956. (P) :
King, A. A. Citeaux and her Elder Daughters. London, 1954.
Le Goff, J. Les Intellectuels au Moyen-Age. Paris, 1957.
Luddy, A. J. Life and Teachings of St. Bernard. Dublin, 1937.
Maritain, J. Art et scholastique. Paris, 1927.
Pernoud, R. Lumiére du Moyen-Age. Paris, 1944.
Pirenne, H. Economic and Social History of Medieval Europe.
New York, 1937. (P)
Pirenne, H. Medieval Cities. Garden City, 1956. (P)
Power, E. Medieval People. Garden City, 1955. (P)
Ross, J. B. and McLaughlin, M. M., eds. The Portable Medieval
Reader. New York, 1949. (P)

II. MEDIEVAL ARCHITECTURE

Adams, H. Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres. Garden City, 1959.

P
Cy M. L’architecture cistercienne en France. Paris, 1947.
Bowie, T. The Sketchbook of Villard de Honnecourt. Blooming-
ton, 1959. (P) ,
Cali, F. and others, eds. Architecture of Truth. London, 1957.
Conant, J. K. Carolingian and Romanesque Architecture (Pelican
History of Art Series). Harmondsworth, 1959.
Crosby, S. McK. The Abbey of St.-Denis, 475-1122. New Haven,
1942.
Evans, J. Art in Medieval France, 987-1498. London, 1948.
Harvey, J. The Gothic World, 1100-1600. London, 1950.

189
Male, E. The Gothic Image. Religious Art in France of the Thir-
teenth Century. New York, 1958. (P)
Panofsky, E. Abbot Suger on the Abbey Church of St.-Denis and
Its Art Treasures. Princeton, 1946.
Panofsky, E. Gothic Architecture and Scholasticism. New York,
1957. (P)
Pevsner, N. “The Term ‘Architect’ in the Middle Ages,” Speculum,
XVII, 1942.
Pillement, G. Cloistres et Abbeys de France. Paris, 1950.
Porter, A.K. Medieval Architecture: Its Origins and Development,
2 vols.New. York, 1909.
Seymour, C., Jr. Notre-Dame of Noyon in the Twelfth Century.
New Haven, 1939.
von Simson, O. The Gothic Cathedral (Bollingen Series XLVIII).
New York, 1956.
Temko, A. Notre-Dame of Paris. New York, 1955S.
Thibout, M. Eglises gothiques en France. Paris, 1957. :
Thompson, A. “Cathedral Builders of the Middle Ages,” History,
X, 1925.
Viollet-le-Duc, E. Discourses on Architecture. 2 vols. New York,
1959. .
Webb, G. Architecture in Britain: The Middle Ages (Pelican His-
tory of Art Series). Harmondsworth, 1955.

III. MEDIEVAL MASONS, CONSTRUCTION, AND ARCHITECTURAL

FINANCE

du Colombier, P. Les chantiers des Cathédrales. Paris, 1953.

Coulton, G. G. Medieval Faith and Symbolism (Part I of Art and
the Reformation). New York, 1958. (P)
Coulton, G. G. The Fate of Medieval Art in the Renaissance and
Reformation (Part II of Art and the Reformation). New York,
1958. (P)
Frankl, P. ‘The Secrets of the Medieval Masons,” The Art Bulle-
tin, XXVII, 1945.
Gille, B., ed. Histoire générale des techniques. Partie médiévale.
Paris, 1959.
Knoop, D. and Jones, G. P. The Genesis of Freemasonry,
Manchester, 1949.
ee D. and Jones, G. P. The Medieval Mason. Manchester,

Knoop, Jones, and Hamer, D. The Two Earliest Masonic Mss.

Manchester, 1938.
de Lespinasse, R. and Bonnardot, F. Le Livre des Metiers d’Etienne
Boileau. Paris, 1879.
Mortet, V. and Deschamps, P. Recueil de textes relatifs a l’histoire
de l’architecture et a la condition des architectes en France au
Moyen-Age. XlIe-XIle siécle. Paris, 1911. XIIe-XIIIe. siécle.
Paris, 1929.
Salzman, L. F. Building in England down to 1450. Oxford, 1952.

190
NOTES

1 Perhaps the best example is the facade of Saint-Vulfran at

Abbeville (Somme). _
2 The vaults of Beauvais Cathedral fell in 1284. While this was
not the only medieval monument known to collapse, it was the
most famous example and the only one rebuilt with twice as many
piers as in the original building for additional strength.
3 Some indication of St. Bernard’s influence on the Virgin’s
popularity in twelfth-century France is contained in Millard Meiss’
“Light as Form and Symbol in some Fifteenth Century Paintings,”
The Art Bulletin, XXVII, 1945, 175-181.
4 Ecclesiastically, the most important cathedral in the Ile-de-
France in the twelfth century was that at Sens, dedicated to St.
Stephen (Saint-Etienne). Paris, Chartres, Auxerre, Meaux, Orléans,
Nevers, and Troyes were all suffragans to it.
5 This “crown” is a geographical accident. Paris was neither
architecturally nor ecclesiastically the center of France in the early
thirteenth century. Gothic architecture did not begin in Paris.
6 Etymologically, “cathedral” is derived from the Latin cathedra
meaning “chair.” Bishops made official pronouncements ex
cathedra. The church building in which the cathedra stayed be-
came the cathedral.
7 In the Middle Ages every person was under the jurisdiction of
a specific parish whose church he was required to attend and to
whose support he was required to contribute. He could not change
parishes without permission. Generally, the public attended services
in the cathedral only on important feast days, such as Christmas
or Easter. By no means was the cathedral open to the public
every day. In later times, when the public came and went as it
pleased and could enter the cathedral at will, the chapter erected
choir screens to keep the sanctuary closed. For example, the choir
screen at Chartres dates from the sixteenth century.
8 Unfortunately, the Sketchbook now contains only the plan of
Cambrai. The elevations amd other details which Villard mentions
have been lost. :
9 On this unique document, see Robert Branner, “Drawings from
a Thirteenth-Century Architect’s Shop: The Reims Palimpsest,”
Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, XV, 1958, 9-19.
10 In others words, the dresser calculated the curvature of the
arch and included it in his drawing. He also drew a “‘view” that
showed the profiles of the bibs, voussoirs, etc.
191
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Bibliothéque nationale (Ed. du Seuil): pp. 7, 20, 67, 68, 109,

110, 113, 117, 118, 123, 124, 178. Bibliothéque Sainte-Geneviéve:
p. 79. Archives photographiques: pp. 10, 11, 17, 27, 33, 39, 59,
141, 146, 153. Courtauld Institute: pp. 36, 41, 54, 55, 61, 73, 148,
164, 179, 185-186, 187, 189. British Museum: p. 56. Musée des
arts et traditions populaires (M. Maget): p. 166. Medieval Art
(W. R. Lethaby): p. 88. Gimpel: pp. 81d. 99, 132, 135. Giraudon:
p. 90. Roger Viollet: p. 102. Léon Violet: p. 96. Toulgouat: p. 70.
Br. I. Birkosb: p. 155. Ina Bandy: pp. 81b, 137. Bulloz: pp. 142-
143. Houvet: pp. 43, 48. Boudot Lamotte: pp. 13, 24, 150, 174.
Lucien Hervé: pp. 9, 14, 19, 29, 121, 138, 171, 177. Bovis: p. 52.
Glassberg: p. 4. Marker: p. 105. Ftab. J- Richard: p. 145.
The photo on page 92 is taken from the book La Franc-magon-
nerie dans la Mayenne by Marius Lepage and André Bouton.
The drawings at the beginning of each chapter are taken from
the Sketchbook of Villard de Honnecourt (Bibliothéque nationale).

Quotations reprinted from Abbot Suger, On the Abbey Church

of St. Denis and its Art Treasures, Erwin Panofsky, 1946, by
permission of Princeton University Press; from The Sketchbook
of Villard de Honnecourt, Theodore Bowie, 1959, reprinted with
permission of distributor, Wittenborn and Company, 1018 Madison
Ave., New York 21, N.Y.; from Vitruvius. Ten Books on Archi-
tecture, Morris Hicky Morgan, 1926, by kind pemmission of Harvard
University Press; from Art and the Reformation, Part II: The Fate
of Medieval Art in the Renaissance and Reformation, G. G. Coul-
ton, 1958, by permission of Cambridge University Press; from The
Abbey of St.-Denis, 475-1122, Summer McKay Crosby, 1942, by
permission of Yale University Press. The Two Earliest Masonic
Mss., ed. by Knoop, Jones, and Hamer, and The Medieval Mason,
= by Knoop and Jones, by permission of Manchester University
Tess.

The translator wishes to thank Professor Robert Branner of the

Department of Fine Arts and Archaeology of Columbia University
for his generous help with various aspects of the translation.

192
 AYa
AN EVERGREEN PROFILE BOOK

This book focuses on one of the greatest bursts of creative

genius in the history of man — the building rage which swept N-

medieval Europe, producing eighty magnificent cathedrals,

five hundred great churches, and more than ten thousand (6/-
parish churches. In France alone, more stone was quarried in $1.35
this span of three centuries than during the entire history of
ancient Egypt.
Jean Gimpel explores the political, financial, and spiritual
role of the churchmen who inspired the construction of
Chartres, Reims, Saint-Denis, Notre-Dame de Paris, and
other equally beautiful but less-known churches and cathe-
drals. He traces the dazzling careers of St. Bernard and the
powerful Abbot Suger, showing how parish rivalry influenced GS'I
sepe
architectural styles; he describes the amazing ingenuity of
engineers and technicians, particularly «Villard de Honne-
court; and shows how the associations of quarrymen, masons,
and sculptors later evolved into guilds and the societies of
Freemasons.

The Cathedral Builders |

by Jean Gimpel
TRANSLATED BY CARL F, BARNES, JR. wi
pci

ho

Gimpel’s thorough study concludes with a description of the

decline of. the cathedral crusade at the end of the thirteenth
century, when the religious fervor of the Middle Ages began
to wane and canon law clashed with Roman law, when techni-’
cal progress and economic expansion were virtually halted,
and the Hundred Years’ War brought ruin and misery.
The Cathedral Builders is part of the EVERGREEN PROFILE
SERIES. Each book, written by an authority in the field, merges
word and picture into a sharply outlined portrait of a single
personality or topic. Other PROFILE books include The Priests
of Ancient Egypt, The Alchemists, and Joan of Arc.
Kuhl
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by
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