No More Learning

Taking the hint from a Jumièges service-book that had been brought
to St Gall, Notker fitted the Alleluias with words appropriate to the
Church season or feast, putting as a rule a syllable to each note of the
long wandering melody. Thus there grew up a new form of poem, non-
metrical at the outset, which in later years became bound by stricter
rules, and which exercised a great influence upon secular poetry. In
Notker's hands it was wholly conditioned by the tune to which it was
set. The one example of it that is widely known in this country is the
funeral sequence, Media in vita, “ In the midst of life,” whether that is
truly Notker's work or not.
He is also famous as the author of the book of reminiscences of
Charlemagne called Gesta Karoli and long current simply as the work of
the “Monk of St Gall. ” It is now recognised as Notker's. Alas! we
possess only a part of it, but what we have is one of the few books of
the period which can really be read with pleasure. There is not much
plan in it; it is in the main Notker’s recollections of stories told to him
in his youth by an old warrior Adalbert who had fought for the Emperor,
and by Adalbert's son Werinbert, a cleric, and also by a third informant


## p. 531 (#577) ############################################

Ekkehard; Gesta Berengarii
531
of
a
whose name has been lost with the preface and the third book of the
Gesta. It was written down at the request of Charles the Fat, who when
staying at St Gall in 883 had been greatly delighted with Notker's tales
of his great-grandfather and his father. Almost all the picturesque
anecdotes that we have of Charlemagne come from this book; tales of
war and peace, of embassies from the East and what they brought, of the
Emperor's dealings with his clergy, behaviour in church, dress, are to be
found here, many doubtless true, others shewing the beginning of a
Charlemagne mythology. The loss of the third book is particularly
exasperating, for in it were promised recollections of the hero's every-day
conversation.
Much more might be said of Notker, of his letters, his poems, his
humour, his treatise on the study of the Fathers (a parallel to the Insti-
tutions of Cassiodorus), but proportion must be observed, and we must
bid farewell to a man both gifted and amiable.
Our second St Gall author is Ekkehard, the first of five persons
that name who are prominent in the Abbey's annals. He died in 973.
Early in life he began the work by which he has deserved to be remem-
bered, the short epic of Waltharius. It is a heroic tale, a single episode
in a warrior's career. Waltharius escapes with his love from the Hun-
garian court in which both he and she were kept as hostages, is pursued
and successfully defends himself against great odds. The story ends
happily, and none of the Latin poems of all this age is better worth
reading. There is little of the flavour of a school exercise about it, and
there is a great deal of the freshness of the best romances in the vernacular.
With the exception of the Gesta Karoli, most of the writings we have
touched upon recently have been in verse. We will give a few paragraphs
to some of the remaining poets. John the Deacon, a Roman, writing in
875, gives us a curious versification of a curious old piece called the
Caena Cypriani, and mingles it with personal satire. The whole thing
is a jeu d'esprit, written, as Lapôtre has shewn, on the occasion of the
coronation of Charles the Bald at Rome, and was recited at a banquet
where were present various notabilities (Anastasius the Librarian among
them) who are smartly hit off.
Hucbald of St Amand's Eclogue in praise of baldness, produced about
885, must be passed with averted eye. Every word of its 146 lines begins
with the letter C.
The early part of the tenth century gives us two anonymous books
of some slight celebrity, the Gesta Berengarii, a panegyric on that
Emperor by an Italian who knew some Greek, and the Ecbasis captivi
by a monk of Toul, “ the oldest beast-epic of the Middle Ages. ” Animals
are the actors, and tales in which they figure are woven together not
without spirit. But more famous in respect of the sex of the writer and
of the vehicle she has employed are the works of Hrotsvitha, a nun of
Gandersheim who wrote about 960. They are collected into three books
CH, XX,
34-2


## p. 532 (#578) ############################################

532
Hrotsvitha; Libri Carolini
whereof the first consists of poems on the lives of the Virgin and certain
other saints (the grotesque legend of Gengulphus of Toul is among them),
the second of six so-called comedies, the third of a short epic on Otto I:
another, on the origins of Gandersheim, is preserved separately. The
comedies are the unusual feature. They are written in no strict metre
but in a rhythmical prose, and treat of episodes from saints' lives. They
are avowedly intended to extol chastity, as a counterblast to the mis-
chievous writings of Terence. We have here the earliest of Christian
dramas (dramatic only in form, for Hrotsvitha would never have sanctioned
the acting of them) and as such they would in any case be interesting;
but they are not without merit. Short and easily read, their plots are
not ill-chosen, and the dialogue moves quickly. There is even a touch
of humour here and there, as when, in Dulcitius, the Roman persecutor
makes love to the pots and pans in the kitchen, under the illusion of their
being Christian girls, and gets covered with soot.
In one or two cases the sources employed are interesting. The first
poem of the first book deals with the life of the Virgin and the Infancy
of Christ, and is drawn from an apocryphal Gospel, in a text usually
fathered upon Matthew, but here upon James the Lord's brother. The
second, on the Ascension, is from an unidentified Greek text translated
by a bishop John. One of the plays is an episode from the Acts of
St John the Evangelist.
It must be said once again that this chapter is not a text-book or a
history, but a survey, of the literature of two centuries. So far it has
been mainly occupied with what by a stretch of language might be called
belles lettres : but these form only a small fraction of the whole bulk of
writings which have come to us from the years 800 to 1000. To leave
the rest unglanced at would be outrageous. Five headings seem to com-
prise the greatest part of what it is really essential to notice: Theology,
Hagiography leading over to History, the Sciences and Arts, and books
in vernacular languages.
In the enormous department of Theology we find two great categories,
Commentaries on the Scriptures and controversial writings. Liturgy and
Homiletics we must leave untouched. From the commentators we have
a huge bulk of material, but with very few exceptions, it is wholly un-
original. Like Bede, these men compiled from earlier authors. The
Glossa Ordinaria, already noticed, is typical. Angelomus of Luxeuil,
Haymo of Halberstadt, Raban Maur, are compilers of this class. For
anything like originality we must look to John the Scot and to Christianus
“Druthmarus” of Stavelot, who wrote (in 865) on St Matthew's Gospel :
but even he is distinguished rather by good sense than by brilliancy.
Five principal controversies occupied the minds and pens of the church
writers. At the beginning of our period we have two: the Adoptionist,
in which Elipandus and Alcuin were the foremost figures, and the Icono-
clastic. The latter produced a remarkable group of books. The Icono-


## p. 533 (#579) ############################################

Radbert and Ratramn; Hagiography
533
clastic cause met much opposition, but also some support, in the West.
The Libri Carolini against images, written at the Emperor's order (whether
or no Alcuin had a hand in them is not settled), are the work of a well-
read man who draws interesting illustrations from pagan mythology and
contemporary works of art. Claudius, Bishop of Turin, was also a hot
Iconoclast in deed and in word. We have only extracts from the treatise
he wrote, but we have replies to it from an Irishman, Dungal, and from
Jonas of Orleans. Dungal, who quotes the Christian poets very largely,
especially Paulinus of Nola, prefixes to his books some fragments from
Claudius, and says that the whole work was one-third as long again as
the Psalter: he seems to think that this aggravates the offence.
The middle of the ninth century saw two more great disputes. One
is that on Predestination, in which the monk Gottschalk, who took the
most rigid view, was forcibly silenced, scourged, and imprisoned by
Hincmar of Rheims, and written against by John the Scot and Paschasius
Radbert of Corbie, to name only two of a large group. Radbert was a
man of very wide reading and had one of the best libraries of the time
at his command. He is one of the very few who quote Irenaeus Against
Heresies. The other dispute concerned the Eucharist. Radbert is here
again to the fore, in defence of the view which, developed, is the faith of
Rome. Ratramn, also of Corbie, wrote in a strain which made the
Reformers of the sixteenth century claim him as an early champion on
their side.
We have other interesting matter from Ratramn's pen; a treatise
against the errors of the Greeks, and a letter to one Rimbert, who had in-
quired what was the proper view to take of the race of Cynocephali, tribes
of dog-headed men believed to inhabit parts of Africa. St Christopher,
it is not generally realised, was of this race, and the conversion of one of
them is also related in the eastern Acts of SS. Andrew and Bartholomew.
Ratramn, who does not cite these examples, answers Rimbert with good
If what is reported of the Cynocephali is borne out by facts,
they must be looked upon as reasonable and redeemable beings.
The controversy with the Greeks is the fifth and last of these to be
mentioned here. Besides Ratramn's book, there is an important con-
tribution to it by Aeneas of Paris.
To Hagiography the Carolingian Renaissance gave an immense
stimulus. The founding of a multitude of abbeys and the building of
great churches and the stocking of them with relics of ancient martyrs,
begged, bought or stolen from Rome, were operative causes. Einhard's
story of the translation of SS. Marcellinus and Peter is one classic to
which relic-hunting gave birth, Rudolf of Fulda's about St Alexander is
another, this last because passages from the Germania of Tacitus are
embodied in it. There was, besides, the natural wish to possess a readable
life of many a patron saint whose doings had been forgotten or else
were only chronicled in barbarous Latin of the seventh century. Lives
sense.
CH. XX.


## p. 534 (#580) ############################################

534
History
and by
invented or rewritten in response to this wish bulk very large in the Acta
Sanctorum. Not unimportant are the versified Passions and Lives which
perhaps begin with Prudentius and Paulinus of Nola and are carried on
by Fortunatus (St Martin), Bede (St Cuthbert), Heiric (St Germanus),
Notker (St Gall) and a whole host of anonymi. All these, fiction or fact,
have their interest, but are of course much inferior to the rare con-
temporary biographies such as those of St Boniface by Willibrord and
of St Anschar by Rimbert.
The mention of these leads naturally to the single biographies of
uncanonised persons. Charlemagne, we have seen, is the subject of the
two best. Those of Louis the Pious by the “ Astronomus
Thegan have nothing of the charm and skill of Einhard and Notker.
Nearest to them is a British writing, the first to be mentioned after a
long interval of silence, Asser's life of Alfred.
Of others, that of Eigil by Candidus, a Fulda production of about
840, and that of John of Gorze by Abbot John of Metz have distinct
interest. Agnellus's collections on the Archbishops of Ravenna, full of
archaeological lore (839), and some of the lives of Popes in the Liber
Pontificalis, perhaps due to the pen of Anastasius the Librarian, supply
us with many facts we are glad to have, but do not pretend to be artistic
biographies.
History writing takes three other principal forms. There is the
world-chronicle, of which Freculphus of Lisieux and Regino of Prüm
(near Trèves) and, later, Marianus Scotus, give examples; there are the
annals, commonly connected with a religious establishment, such as those
of Lorsch; and there is the episodic, telling of some particular campaign
or the rise of some great church. To this last class belongs Nithardus
(† 844); natural son of Angilbert by Charlemagne's daughter Bertha,
and successor (ultimately) to his father as lay-abbot of St Riquier. He
writes four short books in clear and simple prose, on Louis the Pious and
the quarrels of Lothar, Charles the Bald, and Louis the German-a
strictly contemporary record. Incidentally he has preserved, by tran-
scribing the terms of the Oath of Strasbourg, the oldest piece of French
and one of the oldest pieces of German which we have. The church
of Rheims had two historians. Flodoard (also author of some immense
poems) begins in the mists of antiquity and carries the story down to
about 966. Richer, whose book is extant (at Bamberg) in the author's
autograph, dedicates his history to Gerbert; he devotes small space to
early history and much to his own time: his narrative ends in 995.
Widukind of Corvey is another name that cannot be passed over : his
Gesta Saxonum in four books run to the year 973, but by the 16th
chapter of the first book he has reached 880, so that his also must rank
as a history of his own time. Of all these chroniclers and observers
Liudprand of Cremona is by far the smartest. His spiteful pictures of
the Byzantine court are not easily to be paralleled : he has a real turn
a


## p. 535 (#581) ############################################

Geography and science
535
for satire and for vivid description, and the gaps in his text are very
much to be deplored.
Of those who treat of the Arts and Sciences the grammarians are
probably the most numerous. I have renounced the idea of noticing
each Irishman or Frank who has left us an Ars, but I would find a place
here for mention of two Epistles, separated in time by a full century,
which are largely grammatical in subject and epistolary only in form.
They serve mainly as displays of their authors' reading. One is by
Ermenrich of Ellwangen to Grimald of St Gall (854), the other by
Gunzo of Novara to the monks of Reichenau (965) à propos of a monk
a
of St Gall who had rashly criticised his Latin. They are tedious com-
positions, but have their importance.
The ers on Geography are few. Dicuil, an Irishman (825), draws
lar upon ancient sources, but adds something about Iceland and the
Faroe Islands that depends upon the observations of compatriots who had
been there. The famous voyages of Ohthere and Wulfstan, inserted by
Alfred into his Orosius, though they are in the vernacular, must find
mention under this head. Other quasi-geographers are the translators
of Alexander's letter to Aristotle, and other matter on the Marvels of the
East. They probably fall within our period, but the best copies we have
of them-Anglo-Saxon versions illustrated with pictures—may be of the
eleventh century.
Medicine meant chiefly materia medica, collections of recipes, and
spells. The Latin version of Dioscorides, and the recipes and charms
current under the names of Apuleius and Sextus Placidus, were prime
authorities. Little new work was produced.
No idea of the progress made in Music can be given, but by a
specialist : it must suffice here to name Notker, Hoger, and Hucbald of
St Amand as the leading exponents.
Astronomy and Mathematics remain. Both were ancillary to church
purposes, the settling of the Calendar and especially the determination
of Easter. Bede's were the text-books which were perhaps found most
useful generally, and that of Helperic of Auxerre (c. 850) had a wide
circulation. But we may neglect every name that appears in connexion
with Mathematics in favour of that of Gerbert of Aurillac, who died as
Pope Sylvester II in 1003. He is the last really outstanding figure.
Everything that he wrote and did has distinction, and he demands a
somewhat extended notice. Born at Aurillac (Cantal) he spent the years
967–970 in Spain with Hatto, Archbishop of Vich. From 970 to 972
he was with the Emperor: for the next ten years (972–982) he was
master of the cathedral school at Rheims, and Richer devotes many pages
to telling us what he taught there. In 982 he was made Abbot of
Bobbio, the literary treasures of which were no doubt a great attraction
to him : in 991 he became Archbishop of Rheims, in 998 of Ravenna.
In the following year he passed to the Chair of Peter. His political
CH, XX.


## p. 536 (#582) ############################################

536
Gerbert (Sylvester II)
activities, which were great, we will pass over, and deal only with his
literary interests, as they are revealed in his letters and in other sources.
The letters most instructive from this point of view are mostly written
from Bobbio. To Archbishop Adalbero of Rheims he says (Ep. 8),
“Procure me the history of Julius Caesar from Adso, Abbot of Montièr-
ender, to be copied, if you want me to furnish you with what I have,
viz. the eight books of Boethius on Astrology and some splendid geo-
metrical diagrams. ” To Abbot Gisalbert (Ep. 9): “The philosopher
Demosthenes wrote a book on the diseases and treatment of the eyes,
called Ophthalmicus. I want the beginning of it, if you have it, and also
the end of Cicero pro rege Deiotaro. " Rainard, a monk, is asked for
M. Manlius De astrologia (who is thought by Havet not to be the poet
Manilius, but Boethius) and for some other books. Stephen, a Roman
deacon, is to send Suetonius and Symmachus. “The art of persuasive
oratory (Ep. 44) is of the greatest practical utility. With a view to it
I am hard at work collecting a library, and have spent very large sums
at Rome and in other parts of Italy, and in Germany and the Belgian
country, on scribes and on copies of books. " To a monk of Trèves
(Ep. 134): “I am too busy to send you the sphere you ask for: your
best chance of getting it is to send me a good copy of the Achilleis of
Statius. ” The monk sent the poem, but the sphere was again withheld.
Such extracts shew the catholicity of Gerbert's tastes. Richer tells the
same tale; he runs through the Seven Liberal Arts, and shews what
methods and books Gerbert used in teaching each of them. In Mathe-
matics his chief innovation seems to have been the revival of the use of
the abacus for calculations, and the employment, in connexion with it,
of an early form of the “ Arabic" (really Indian) numerals from 1 to 9,
without the zero. He also wrote on mathematical subjects, though,
perhaps, no signal discovery stands to his credit. Besides all this he was
a practical workman. William of Malmesbury describes in rather vague
terms an organ made by him which was to all appearance actuated by
steam. To the same excellent author and to Walter Map we owe all the
best of the many legends that have gathered about Gerbert; of the
treasure he found at Rome, guided to it by the statue whose forehead
was inscribed “Strike here,” of the fairy whom he met in the forest near
Rheims, and of his death. He, like Henry IV of England, was not to
,
die but in Jerusalem. His Jerusalem was the basilica of Sta Croce in
Gerusalemme at Rome. It may be worth while to end this sketch of
him with a correction. We are commonly told that the sixth or seventh
century uncial manuscript of the Scriptores Gromatici, the Roman writers
on land-measurement, which is now at Wolfenbüttel, and is known as the
Codex Arcerianus, was Gerbert's. This is denied by his latest editor,
Boubnov, though he allows that the book was at Bobbio in the tenth
century.
Our last topic is that of books in vernacular. For practical purposes


## p. 537 (#583) ############################################

Books in vernacular
537
this unscientific expression means the Celtic and Teutonic families of
speech ; our period has nothing to shew for the Romance languages.
Most of what it seemed needful to say about Celtic literature in connexion
with learning has found a place in the chapter preceding this. It must
be borne in mind that the evolution of fresh native literatures independent
of learning transmitted by books is foreign to our subject; the fact that
the really native product is in itself the best worth reading is irrelevant
here. Famous poems such as the Tain Bo Cuailnge and Beowulf, and
the Dream of the Rood, therefore have to be passed over, and such parts
of the old Northern corpus of poetry as critics allow to be anterior to
the year 1000.
Infinitely the largest place in these two centuries is occupied by the
Anglo-Saxon writings. A certain number of poems assigned to the latter
part of the eighth century are on themes derived from books. The
Andreas of the Vercelli manuscript is from a text which is only forth-
coming in scanty fragments of Latin, though we have it in Greek: there
was also once a poem on the adventures of St Thomas in India, but it
has disappeared; it was too fabulous for Aelfric to use as the basis of his
Homily on the Apostle. Other Acts of Saints are drawn upon in the
poems called Elene and Juliana. We have not the original that lies
behind the Dialogue of Salomon and Saturn, but there was one, pre-
sumably in Latin, and a strange book it must have been. The Phoenix
is in part at least a rendering of a poem attributed to Lactantius. One
of the Genesis-poems-that which is called Genesis B, and has been said
to be anglicised from Old Saxon-is held to be under obligations to the
poems of Alcimus Avitus. The ninth century Homilies of the Vercelli
and Blickling manuscripts, as has been said, present versions of and
allusions to the Apocalypse of Thomas. The source oftenest employed
for sermons is not unnaturally the homily-book of Gregory the Great, to
whom Christian England owed so much.
The end of the same century sees King Alfred's work: he puts into
the hands of his clergy and people Gregory, Orosius, Bede, and Boethius,
and infuses into Orosius and Boethius something of his own great spirit.
He did not seek to make his people or his priests erudite, but to fit them
for the common duties of their lives: we find little curious learning in
what he wrote or ordered to be written. And in the work of Aelfric, nearly
a hundred years later, I seem to see an equally sober and practical, yet not
prosaic, mind. His sermons, whether he is paraphrasing Gregory on the
Sunday Gospels, or is telling the story of a saint from his Acts, appear
to be exactly fitted to their purpose of leading simple men in the right
way: skill in narrative, beauty of thought, goodness of soul, are there.
Whatever Aelfric it was who composed the Colloquy for schoolboys,
he, too, was gifted with sympathy and freshness. It gives some pictures
of ordinary life and manners which have long been popular, and with
good reason.
CH. XX.


## p. 538 (#584) ############################################

538
Destruction of libraries
Of some books and fragments which concern matters not theological,
it is hard to say whether they fall just within or just outside our period.
Such are the medical receipts, the leechdoms and the descriptions of
Eastern marvels already alluded to; such too the dream-books, the
weather prognostics, the version of the story of Apollonius of Tyre.
Byrhtferth of Ramsey, almost the only author of this class whose name
has survived, wrote partly in Latin and partly in the vernacular upon
“computus,” Calendarial science, shortly before the year 1000, when he
anticipates the loosing of Satan.
There was a time when it would have been proper to say that important
remains of Welsh poetry far older than A. D. 1000 were in existence.
That time is past, and it is recognised that the poems of Taliesin and
the rest are not of the first age. Glosses and small fragments of verse
are the oldest things we have in Welsh. Ireland has more, but the
documents—so far as they have not been noticed already—which bear on
learning, a great many can only be dated by the linguistic experts, and
unanimity is no more the rule among the scholars than among the
politicians of the Celts.
There are, it has been said, Irish versions of the Aethiopica of Helio-
dorus, of the Thebaid of Statius and of the Odyssey. To the first no
date is assigned; it is not in print, and for all one can tell it may have
been made from a printed edition: the second appears to be a medieval
abstract in prose: the only published text that represents the third is a
short prose tale. It has some traits (as of the dog of Odysseus recognising
him) which are not derivable from Latin sources, and read like distorted
recollections of the Greek; but the main course of the story is wholly
un-Homeric. Nor is it claimed as falling within our period. I cite this
as a specimen of exaggerations that are current. They are wholly uncalled
for.
Nobody doubts the reality of the ancient learning of Ireland. It is
safe to predict that sober and critical research will not lessen but increase
our sense of the debt which the modern world owes, first to Ireland and
after her to Britain, as the preservers and transmitters of the wisdom of
old time.
I end this chapter, as I began it, with these islands; and as I write,
just such a storm hangs over them as that which, breaking, drove Alcuin
from their shores eleven centuries ago; and just such destruction is being
wrought in the old homes of learning, Corbie, and St Riquier, Laon and
Rheims, as the Vikings wrought then. But the destroyers of to-day are
no Vikings. They are, and the more is the pity, men of a race which has
done a vast deal for learning; that has brought to light things new and
old. They are undoing their own work now: they have robbed the world
of beauties and delights that never can be given back. It will be long
before any of the nations can forgive Germany; longer still, I earnestly
hope, before she can forgive herself.
:


## p. 539 (#585) ############################################

539
CHAPTER XXI.
BYZANTINE AND ROMANESQUE ARTS.
When Constantine rebuilt the city which we still call Constantinople
as a new Rome in the East, doubtless mixed methods in architecture
were resorted to. The more important buildings of his official architects
must have been in the current Roman manner. Secondary buildings
and ordinary dwellings would, however, have been constructed according
to local customs, and a modified style must soon have resulted here, as
earlier had been the case in Alexandria, and in other Greek and Roman
cities of the East. The later Roman architecture became more and more
changed through these contacts with the East, not only in structure but
in the decorations and the underlying ideals which governed both. It
is this mixed product which formed the Byzantine architecture, and
has been so named by modern students from the old name of the new
capital of the Empire.
As through recent explorations we come to know more of the building
modes practised in Egypt, North Africa, Syria, Asia Minor and Mesopo-
tamia, that is, throughout eastern Christendom, it becomes increasingly
difficult to cover them all with the one narrow word Byzantine. In
Syria, for instance, the builders had much fine stone at command, but
little or no brick or timber, and here, in consequence, everything archi-
tectural tended to be turned to stone. In Constantinople the common
stone was a good, easily cutting, white marble, and this was liberally
used in association with excellent burnt bricks of thin flat shape. In
Egypt there was a little fine limestone and much mud for bricks, which
were frequently, for secondary purposes, used in an unburnt condition.
The term Byzantine properly applies to the style of building
developed in the new imperial capital, but some such word as Byzan-
tesque seems to be required to describe inclusively those many varieties of
building practised in the Christian East, which were yet more or less the
members of a common tradition.
In the fourth century, when the new capital was built, the style was
still Roman and the point of view was mainly pagan. Byzantine archi-
tecture developed step by step as the Empire became Christianised ; and
two hundred years later, during the reign of Justinian, the Byzantine
style was fully established. We may put the emergence of the style
CH. XXI.


## p. 540 (#586) ############################################

540
Early building
about the middle of the fifth century, that is half-way between the reigns
of Constantine and Justinian.
In the East from a very early time ordinary building works were for
the most part done with sun-dried mud bricks. In hot, dry countries this
forms a fairly good material. Besides this use of crude bricks there had
come down a still simpler way of building by aggregations of clay. The
mud, even when subdivided into crude bricks, adhered so thoroughly when
put together in a mass with liquid mud in the joints, that a type of struc-
ture was developed which was homogeneous; the roofs and floors being of
the same materials as the walls, and continuous with them. The chambers,
large or small, were cells in a mass-material. Such a method of building
was common to the valleys of the Nile and the great rivers of Western
Asia. Burnt bricks were in turn developed from mud bricks by an exten-
sion of the method found so successful in making pottery. Such bricks
were often used for special purposes in combination with the crude bricks
from an early time. The building forms made use of in typical Byzan-
tine architecture largely depended on the use of brick, which may be
regarded as the bringing together of small units well cemented so as
to form continuous walls and vaults. Burnt bricks were usually set in
so much mortar, the bricks being thin and the joints thick, that the
whole became a sort of built concrete. The mortar in a wall, in fact,
must frequently have been much more in quantity than the bricks.
Arising doubtless out of primitive ways of forming mud roofs, it
became customary later to construct vaults of mud bricks, and then of burnt
bricks, by leaning the courses against an end wall so that the vault was
gradually drawn forward from the end of a given chamber in inclined
layers. Each layer was thus supported by the part already done and no
centring was required. Domes came to be erected in a somewhat similar
way. A rod or a cord being attached to the centre so as to be readily
turned in any direction, a dome was reared on its circular base, a course
at a time, the curvature being determined by the length of the rod or
cord. About 1670 Dr Covel described this method of procedure, and it
is still practised in the East, although skilled dome builders are now but
few.
If a dome is not set over a circle, but over an octagon or a square, a
troublesome question arises in regard to the angles. Where the chamber
is small, and especially in the case of the octagonal form, the work can
easily be jutted out in the angles so as roughly to conform to the circular
base required for the dome. When, however, a square area is large,
some regular solution becomes necessary. The angles of the square may
be cut off by diagonal arches so as to form an octagon. If such arches
are so built as to continue back into the angles forming little vaults,
on a triangular base, they are called squinches. In such cases as these the
base of the dome is governed by the width across the chamber, but it is
possible to plan a dome on the diagonal dimensions of the area to be
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Domes
541
a
а
covered so as to spring out of the angles. In this case it is clear that
the dome as seen from within gradually expands from the four lowest
points and spreads on the walls as it grows upward, forming concave
triangles having curved lines against the four walls. These pieces of the
domical surface running down into the angles are called pendentives.
When the circular basis required for the dome is formed by these pen-
dentives it is possible to set a complete semispherical dome on them,
and there will be a break in the curvature where such a dome springs
from the pendentives; or it is possible to carry on the curvature of
the pendentives, forming in this case a flatter dome with the surface con-
tinuous to the angles. The first would be a dome on pendentives, and the
other we might call a pendentive dome. Again a third variety is
obtained by building a circular ring of wall, a
a circular ring of wall, a “drum," above the
pendentives, and on that the dome at a higher level. This was a later
fashion. It is rather difficult to see the geometry of all this without a
model; but if an apple be cut into halves, and then one half is laid on its
cut surface and four vertical cuts are made in pairs opposite to one
another so as to reduce the circular base to a square, we shall obtain a
model of a dome with continuous pendentives.
The methods of building ordinary vaults with inclined courses as
described above were practised in Egypt in the early dynasties, and also
in Mesopotamia. Evidence is accumulating which suggests that domes,
even domes with pendentives, were used in these countries long before the
Christian era. A dome with pendentives has been found over an Egyptian
tomb which seems to have been built about 1500 years B. C. When Alex-
ander built his new Greek capital in Egypt it must have been a city of brick
buildings covered with vaults, save for a few chief structures which were
built in the usual manner of Greek temples. A Latin author, writing
about the year B. c. 50, says that the houses of Alexandria were put
together without timber, being constructed with vaults covered over
with concrete or stone slabs. The scarcity of timber in Egypt, the
cause behind the development of vaulted structures, is again brought
before us in a letter written by St Gregory to Eulogius, the Patriarch of
Alexandria, in regard to timber which was sent to him all the way from
Italy. It was doubtless from the new Hellenistic capital, and possibly
from Western Asia as well, that the art of building vaulted structures
spread to Pompeii and Rome. Later, it was almost certainly from
Alexandria that Constantinople obtained the more developed traditions
of brick building by which it was possible to erect the great church of
St Sophia. It seems to be equally true that decorative ideas and
processes were largely derived from Alexandria. In addition to the
facts mentioned in the first volume, reference may be made to a painted
catacomb chamber at Palmyra illustrated by Strzygowski, who assigned
it to the third century. Amongst the subjects are Victories carrying
medallions like those on consular ivories of the fifth century.
There are
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542
Early churches
a
also panels representing geometrical arrangements of marble, and a
cornice imitating modillions in a formal perspective on the flat. This is
practically identical with a “cornice” band made up of flat morsels of
marble of different colours at Salonica. At Ravenna again there are
angels in mosaic which are certainly derived, as Strzygowski himself
pointed out, from such medallion-bearing Victories as those of Palmyra.
Alexandria would be the best common centre for places so far apart as
Salonica, Ravenna and Palmyra, and the painted catacomb at the latter
place may be taken to represent Alexandrian art of the fifth century.
Catacomb burial itself most probably originated in Alexander's city.
Recent explorations in Asia reveal how wide was the saturation of late
Hellenistic and early Christian art in the East. Alexandria was the great
emporium for distributing works of art over the civilised world.
Two early churches, both perhaps of the fifth century, may be taken
as types, one of the circular plan and the other of the basilican. The
former, the church of St George at Salonica, is a domed rotunda having
a very thick wall in which a series of recesses are, as it were, excavated,
while a bema with an apse projects to the eastward. The circular
“nave” thus follows the tradition of many Roman tomb buildings as,
for instance, that of St Helena at Rome; this constitutes indeed the
martyrion type of church. The rotunda of Salonica may be earlier
than the bema attached to it and may have been erected in the fourth
century; the masonry of the wall is of small stones with bonding courses
of brick, a late Roman fashion. The dome, which is about eighty feet
in diameter, was encrusted within with mosaics of which large portions
still remain. Eight great panels contained martyrs standing in front of
architectural façades. These are, it may be supposed, the courts of
,
paradise. The saints are in the attitude of prayer ; and some ivories
.
shew St Menas of Alexandria in a similar way. One of these ivories
has the background filled by an architectural composition which is
remarkably like those of the Salonica mosaics. Here are round pedi-
ments filled with shells, lamps hanging between pairs of columns,
curtains drawn back, and birds. Mr Dalton has spoken of the architectural
façades which derive from the scenes of the theatre as “ in a Pompeian
style,” and has remarked that the free use of jewelled ornament on
columns and arches is an oriental feature. It is not to be doubted that
these mosaics derive from the art of Alexandria. The recesses of the
interior are also covered with mosaic; this church must have been a
wonderfully beautiful work. The dome is covered externally by a low-
pitched roof.
The basilican church mentioned above is St John of the Studion at
Constantinople, which was built about 463 and is now in a terribly
ruined condition. It is rather short and wide and had two storeys of
marble columns on either hand, the lower tier supporting a moulded
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Precursors of St Sophia
543
a
aiding to carry the roof. A really structural gallery of this kind is a
beautiful feature. The most perfect part of this church is now the col-
umnar front of the narthex. The columns and entablature are of marble
elaborately carved. This carving, in accordance with a principle which
afterwards became still more marked, is sharply cut into the general
block-form of the mouldings and capitals, the serrated edges of the leaves
are in sharp triangular forms, and details are accentuated with holes
formed by a drill
. On the white marble and under the bright light this
delicately fretted surface decoration tells like pierced work; indeed a
little later it became customary to undercut much of the surface patterns
so that the capitals were surrounded by a thin layer of pierced pattern
work only attached here and there to the background; the result was
often wonderfully vivid and delightful. Marble door frames were set
between the columns of the narthex, forming a screen; this, like all such
expedients in Byzantine architecture, is done in a perfectly direct and
simple manner. Without pretence and without bungling the builders
did what was required in a free and great way ; but it was done in
noble materials under the guidance of a fine tradition. Byzantine archi-
tecture at its best gives us a romantic feeling of freedom with a classical
sense of order; it followed a law of liberty.
Another typical building is the church of SS. Sergius and Bacchus at
Constantinople, built about 526. The plan of the central area is an
octagon with semicircular recesses projecting from the alternate sides ;
there are eight strong piers but the interspaces are set with columns
which bear a marble entablature forming a gallery beam which follows
the tradition just described. The outer walls form a square, from which
to the eastward projects the apse of the bema. The central area is
covered by a dome which is protected by leadwork but not by any inde-
pendent roof. The church of S. Vitale at Ravenna closely resembles
that of SS. Sergius and Bacchus, but it has hemicycles of columns pro-
jecting from every side of the octagon except where the bema opens
to the east.
Both these churches were built before Justinian essayed the colossal
task at St Sophia, which became one of the greatest building triumphs
in the whole history of architecture. The reign of Justinian was a time
of astonishing architectural activity ; nothing of the kind was to be
experienced again, until the twelfth and thirteenth centuries marked, by
the erection of countless cathedrals, another flood-time of art. The
superb plan of St Sophia must have been led up to by a great number
of experiments in smaller churches, many of which have been destroyed
unrecorded. The church of Sergiopolis, the ruins of which still exist,
has great hemicycles of columns on either side of the “nave,” and
Wulff has recorded two fragmentary plans from ruined churches at
Tralles, one of which had some affinity with the church at Sergiopolis,
while the other had a great apse from which five apsidal niches projected.
CH. XXI.


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544
St Sophia
Then again the churches of St Irene and of the Holy Apostles, the
latter of which was later than St Sophia, were both experiments in form
and in the equilibrium of domes. The Church of Christ (the Holy Wisdom,
St Sophia) at Constantinople, has from the moment of its erection been
the most famous church in the world. It was only a century old when
Arculf brought an account of it to the West, and from that day to
this its reputation has been unchallenged. It was the supreme effort of
the greatest emperor-builder of the Christian era. It seems to be more
individual and original and less related to other buildings of its kind in
scale, power and splendour than is any other great architectural work.
As M. Choisy has said, “ It is a conception marvellous in its audacity-
the science of effect, the arts of counterpoise, and of noble decoration
can be pushed no further. ” This wonderful structure was begun on
15 January 532; it was completed in six years and dedicated at Christmas
537: an astonishing effort. The dome soon fell, but it was rebuilt and
the church was re-dedicated at Christmas 563.
It is a vast domed hall, surrounded by other halls forming aisles and
having two storeys, while the central area rises to the dome. The more
organic parts of the structure like the columns, door and window frames,
are all of porphyry and of marbles, some white, some coloured. All the
rest is rough brickwork entirely covered over within by a precious
plating of fine marbles and mosaics of pattern-work and figures on
gold backgrounds. There must be whole acres of these encrustations of
marble and mosaic. Procopius says, “The entire vaulting is covered
with gold, but its beauty is even surpassed by the marbles which reflect
back its splendour. ” On the exterior the structure is bare and plain.
It was probably partially sheeted with marble; the great windows are
filled with marble lattices. The domes are covered with lead applied
directly upon the brickwork. The central dome was much flatter as first
built than it is at present. Expanse rather than height was aimed at.
In front of the church was a great square court surrounded by arcades,
and many other enclosures full of trees formed quiet precincts around
the cathedral. From the description of the Court poet, Paul the
Silentiary, recited in 563, at the opening ceremony after the fallen
dome had been rebuilt, we may form some picture of the splendour of
the great building when complete with all its necessary furniture. The
stalls of the priests in the apse were plated with silver. The iconostasis
was also of silver, while the altar was of gold set with precious stones,
and sheltered by a ciborium, or canopy, of silver—“ a silver tower, on
fourfold arches and columns, furnished with an eight-sided pyramid, a
globe and cross above wrought with many a loop of twining acanthus. "
On the central axis in front of the iconostasis was the ambo, having a
flight of steps to the east and another to the west. It rose from the
midst of a circular screen of columns which enclosed also the place for
the singers. On the beam which rested on the columns stood many
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Contemporary descriptions
545
a
standards bearing lamps, “ like trees. " The ambo itself had a canopy,
and the whole was formed of precious marbles, silver and ivory. On the
elevated floor of this ambo the Emperors were crowned. It was the
prototype of the “pulpitum ” set up at Westminster where the English
kings were crowned.
“Who shall describe the fields of marble gathered on the pavement
and lofty walls of the church? Fresh green from Carystus, and many-
coloured Phrygian stone of rose and white, or deep red and silver; por-
phyry powdered with bright spots, green of emerald from Sparta, and
Iassian marble with waving veins of blood-red on white; streaked red
stone from Lydia and crocus-coloured marble from the hills of the Moors.
Celtic stone like milk poured out on glittering black; the precious onyx
like as if gold were shining through it, and the fresh green from the
land of Atrax, a mingled harmony of shining surfaces. The mason also
has fitted together thin pieces of marble figuring intertwining curves
bearing fruit and flowers, with here and there a bird sitting on the twigs.
Such adornment surrounds the church above the columns. The capitals
are carved with the barbed points of graceful acanthus; but the vaulted
roof is covered over with many a little square of gold, from which the rays
streaming down strike the eyes so that men can scarcely bear to look. ”
The church was dedicated and re-dedicated at Christmas, and the
axis of the church points exactly to the point of sunrise on Christmas
Day. It must have been at the very moment of sunrise that the doors
of the completed church were thrown open.
The poet says, “At last the holy morn had come, and the great door
of the new-built temple ground on its opening hinges. And when the
first beam of rosy light, driving away the shadows, leapt from arch to
arch, all the princes and people hymned their song of praise and prayer,
and it seemed as if the mighty arches were set in heaven. ”
The architects were two artists from Asia Minor, Anthemius of
Tralles and Isidorus of Miletus. They were the most famous builders of
the age, and Anthemius with a younger Isidorus, nephew of the other,
is said to have built also the Church of the Holy Apostles.
The square area covered by the central dome of St Sophia is more
than one hundred feet in each direction ; it is prolonged, east and west,
by two vast semicircles, making a length of considerably more than two
hundred feet. From the eastern semicircle open three smaller apses,
and to the west open two apses and a central square compartment. All
this is unobstructed area, one colossal chamber. At the sides of the
square central space, and around the four corner apses, stand magnificent
monolithic columns of porphyry, and of marble, green spotted with white.
These columns with their arches support the gallery floor above the
aisles. Over them again rise other columns which bear the lateral walls
supporting the dome. The dome itself is pierced around its base by
forty windows through which a flood of light pours into the vast space.
C. MED, H. VOL. III. CH. XXI.
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546
Decoration
On the pendentives are still four colossal six-winged cherubim of mosaic,
which probably formed part of the first decoration. Similar creatures
are painted in the nearly contemporary MS. of Cosmas the traveller.
The dome probably had a figure of Christ in a circle at the summit and
the rest of its surface sprinkled with stars. Right and left on the vault
of the bema are still two great angels with wings which reach to their
feet. On the vault of the apse itself are also some remains, although
much injured and now obscured by paint, of a large figure of the seated
Virgin holding in her arms the Saviour who gives the benediction.
Probably these are works executed after the Iconoclastic interval.
Anthony, a Russian pilgrim (c. 1200), says that Lazarus the image-
painter first painted in the sanctuary of St Sophia the Virgin with Christ in
her arms and two angels. Now a celebrated artist of this name was one
of those who suffered at the Iconoclastic persecution; he was imprisoned
and tortured but he survived to replace over the great gate of the palace
called Chalce the image of Christ. Bayet, who quotes the story from the
life of Theophilus, speaks of this with some doubt as a monastic legend
(Byz. Art, p. 124). This very figure, however, is mentioned within fifty
years of the time required in an edict of Leo the Wise known as the
Book of the Prefect. In this it is ordained that the perfumers of the
city should have their shops between the Milion and the “Venerated
image of Christ which surmounts the Portico of Chalce, to the end that
the incense should rise toward the image. ” Further Dr Walsh, who was
chaplain to our embassy at the Porte about 1820, writes in a little book
entitled Essuys on Ancient Coins, “ There stood till very late in Con-
stantinople an inscription over the gate of the palace, called Chalce.
Under a large cross sculptured over the entrance to the palace were the
following words, “The Emperor cannot endure that Christ should be
represented (graphes) a mute and lifeless image graven on earthly
materials, but Leo and his young son Constantine have at their gates
engraved the thrice blessed representation of the Cross, the glory of
believing monarchs. " A plain cross had evidently replaced the original
image; later, possibly under Michael II, a crucifix was again placed over
the gateway. Doubtless a similar alteration was made in St Sophia and
other churches, and of one of these we still have ample evidence. The fine
conch over the apse of the church of St Irene in Constantinople has only
a large plain cross, erect on a stepped base set on a gold background.
In St Sophia at Salonica there is a similar plain cross over the apse, and
both these are almost certainly of the Iconoclastic period.
After this short description of the central classical example of Byzan-
tine art, St Sophia, Constantinople, it is impossible to attempt any
account of other individual buildings. At Salonica there is a wonderful
group of churches, including the superb basilica of St Demetrius. In
Asia Minor there are a great number of ruined churches, many of which
must have been built during the reign of Justinian.