The Birth of Romanesque

Viking raids ended in the mid 11th century, probably because most of the Scandinavian states had become Christianized.  This and the fact that the marauding Magyars had settled down in Hungary, made Europe safer than it had been in centuries.  Of course, there were still bloody wars—for example, Macbeth killed his cousin to win a kingdom and William conquered England—but there was relative peace, which allowed cities to grow and prosper.  Less preoccupied with defending themselves, towns and cities found time to improve their looks. Great building projects were undertaken.

Since the 11th through 12th centuries were a highly charged religious age, the most glorious new buildings were churches.  It was the era of pilgrimages to Jerusalem, Rome and Santiago, and it was the age of the Crusades (the first was launched in 1095).  The building craze was intimately connected to these powerful religious movements.  Many of the new cathedrals were “pilgrimage churches” built on the great pilgrim routes to Santiago in north-western Spain.

The increased stability made travel safer, and every year hundreds of thousands of pilgrims journeyed to shrines where saints’ relics—belongings, bones and other body parts—were housed.  These pilgrims gave donations to churches, which helped pay for the new building projects.  The money came from rich and poor alike.  Most medieval Christians believed giving money to churches was a way of paying for their sins.  In the early decades of the 11th century, Canute built churches throughout England in all the places where he’d slaughtered Englishmen.  Macbeth scattered alms among the poor during his pilgrimage to Rome.  The result of this outpouring of piety and cash is best described by the 11th-century monk Raoul Glaber.  He wrote:  “There occurred throughout the world… a rebuilding of church basilicas… It was as if the whole earth…were clothing itself in a white robe of churches.”

The cathedrals which these donations paid for were built in a new style, which a later age dubbed Romanesque.  Europe hadn’t known much peace since the fall of Rome; many looked longingly to that era and mimicked it in their building projects—perhaps to recapture some of Rome’s lost glory and prestige. The new churches, constructed between 1050 and 1200, were Roman-like or Romanesque.  They had rounded arches and solid masonry walls like the ancient Coliseum in Rome, and they had stone vaulting (see image below) and small windows. However, Romanesque architecture is more varied and awe-inspiring than these few characteristics suggest.

One of the grandest Romanesque churches is the pilgrimage church of St. Sernin in the lovely French town of Toulouse at the foot of the Pyrenees.  It was built between 1060 and 1118 along the main artery of the route to Santiago, better known as the Road of St. James.  The relics of St. James were believed to be enshrined at Santiago de Compostela.

Typical of many Romanesque churches, St. Sernin has a cruciform or cross shape and a great tower at the center, which still dominates the old town of Toulouse.

From France to England

To house the sacred relics, architects added small budding chapels at the eastern end of the cathedral.  To aid in pilgrim “traffic control,” they doubled the number of side aisles.  Thanks to this innovation, the thousands of pilgrims who poured in on holy days could approach the altar from all directions without trampling on each other.

St. Sernin Cathedral, Interior

The most extraordinary feature of St.  Sernin is its two-story, tunnel-vaulted nave (see above). Although the great weight of its stone ceiling required thick interior walls and massive columns to support it (and demanded small windows), St. Sernin’s architects created a feeling of height and space by systematically varying the size and number of its Roman arches.  For example, tall, narrow arches form the lower level of the nave arcade; while short, delicate twin arches span the second story of the nave (or clerestory).[1]  A third set of arches rise from the main floor to meet the transverse support ribs of the ceiling.  These diverse arcing elements draw our eyes upward or heavenward; at the same time the row of arches along the length of the center aisle pulls us rhythmically toward the altar.  The combination of these psychological pulls tends to stretch our sense of the cathedral’s size, making St. Sernin seem vaster, grander.  We soar with the architecture.

[1]Cler (clear) means to give light; clerestory means the story of a church that gives light, usually the second story where the largest windows are located.

Photograph of interior of Saint-Sernin by Nancy Castille

Durham Cathedral

When William the Conqueror invaded England in 1066, Norman bishops brought the Romanesque style to England, which until then had been confined to the continent of Europe.  (Recall from “Bayeux & the Battle of Hastings” in NEXUS that William gained papal support for the invasion by promising to reform the Anglo-Saxon Church.  Romanesque architecture was a side effect of Norman reform.)  The masterpiece of Romanesque architecture in England is Durham Cathedral.  Durham soars majestically above a cliff overlooking a sharp bend in the River Wear on England’s northern border.  Because of its strategic location near the Scottish frontier, the Durham Cathedral complex served as both a church and a fortress site. The gigantic structure took forty years to complete, which was very fast in those days.  The constant threat of Scottish invasions must have propelled the builders to erect the church-fortress at break-neck speed.

Durham Cathedral houses the relics of St. Cuthbert,[2] the seventh-century bishop of Lindisfarne (isle of the famed Lindisfarne Gospels, which were created in honor of St. Cuthbert; see p. 24 in NEXUS).  Like the relics of many major saints, Cuthbert’s remains were said to perform miracles—even unkind miracles.  St. Cuthbert was very devout and, for the most part, a loving man.  He cared so much for animals that he once shared his breakfast with an eagle.  It’s also said he taught the eider duck its gentle ways.  But Cuthbert had a dark side—or so people said.  He supposedly hated women.[3]  When 12th-century masons were building a Lady’s Chapel next to his shrine, it suddenly collapsed for no apparent reason.  Many other unexplainable “accidents” plagued the construction. Eventually it was decided to build the chapel in another part of the cathedral.  Legend has it that St. Cuthbert’s spirit undermined the project to prevent female worshippers from getting too close to his bones.

The remains of the Venerable Bede,[4]the father of English history, are enshrined in Durham as well.  Also, the cathedral complex houses several parishes, including St. Margaret’s Parish, which was built in honor of the devout Scottish queen who succeeded Lady Macbeth.  Durham was begun in 1093, the year of St. Margaret’s and Malcolm’s deaths.

Durham’s[5] cruciform plan, rounded arches, and masonry construction are reminiscent of St.  Sernin’s.  Yet, several new architectural features distinguish it from older Romanesque cathedrals like St. Sernin. These include its soaring three-story nave (Sernin’s is two stories), large clerestory windows (recall St. Sernin’s windows were kept small because of the enormous weight of the roof), widely-spaced nave arcade, and its alternate arrangement of compound piers (clusters of columns) and cylindrical columns.

Another innovation is the construction of the nave ceiling. The new vaulting system has pointed vaults. (These vaults are formed by two modified tunnel vaults—like the ceiling at St. Sernin—joined at right angles; see drawing and photo below)  The entire ceiling is also braced by a network of ribs, some of which create an X design. This new construction enabled the architects to build higher and wider naves.

Durham’s Anglo-Saxon decorative motifs also set it apart from its continental cousins.  Ornamental diamonds, chevrons, spirals, and fluted patterns are boldly chiseled into its massive cylindrical columns.  And if we look up, scalloped or zigzag-patterned moldings adorn the arches and vaulting ribs. (Compare the Durham designs to the patterns in Anglo-Saxon and Celtic manuscripts depicted in NEXUS.)

By 1150 the Romanesque style peaked, at least in England and France, and a new building craze began to take its place—the Gothic.[6] Today, it’s the great Gothic cathedrals like Notre Dame in Paris and Chartres that get most of the attention from tourists.  But Romanesque architecture is beautiful and impressive too. To appreciate it requires a little patience; we must take the time to look and to ponder the powerful religious and social forces that brought this grand style into being.

THE WHITE ROBE OF CHURCHES: ROMANESQUE ARCHITECTURE—by Dr. Donna Cottrell, Art Historian.  © NEXUS, 1998.

[1] See above.

[2]The donations that Cuthbert’s relics attracted over the centuries helped pay for the construction of Durham Cathedral.

[3]In spite of his reputation for misogyny, St. Cuthbert cured many women of various illnesses, according to his biographer Bede.

[4]Bede wrote The Ecclesiastical History of the English Nation in the early 8th century. He also wrote The Life and Miracles of St. Cuthbert.

[5]Although the nave of Durham Cathedral is basically unaltered from Romanesque times, the stained glass and rose windows of the east and west ends, the Western Facade towers, and the choir are thirteenth and fifteenth century additions.

[6]The older style paved the way for the newer.  Durham, with its groin-vaulted ceiling and large clerestory windows is several steps closer to Gothic than St. Sernin.

ANSWER THE FOLLOWING QUESTIONS ON YOUR WORD PROCESSOR OR A SHEET OF PAPER:

1. What is the connection between Romanesque Architecture and Ancient Rome?
2. Why, where and when did the Romanesque style start?
3. Give three distinguishing features of Romanesque architecture.
4. What is the pilgrimage route to Santiago called?
5. Why was Santiago one of the two biggest pilgrimage destinations in Europe?
6. What is a pilgrimage church?
7. Give one reason that pilgrims donated money to the churches they visited?
8. What is a cruciform church?
9. How did the architects of St. Sernin accommodate pilgrim traffic flow in the cathedral?
10. What is tunnel or barrel vaulting?
11. What is the nave of a church or cathedral?
12. What is the clerestory section of a cathedral?
13. How did the Romanesque style reach England?
14. Why was Durham Cathedral both a church and a fortress?
15. What saint’s relics are housed in Durham Cathedral? What famous gospels were dedicated to this saint?

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