Such a dome as
Brunelleschi
proposed to erect had
never been built.
never been built.
Warner - World's Best Literature - v18 - Mom to Old
' Of course a prose version of
a poem, itself a highly elaborated masterpiece of rhythmical form,
will not satisfy every reader; but all the thoughts of Dante are here
transferred. It is earnestly to be hoped that the 'Convito' also will
be given to the public in completed form. As originator, president,
and soul of the Dante Society, Mr. Norton must be credited with
most of the modest sum total thus far accomplished on American soil
in Dantesque research and publication.
In the direction of his professional teaching, Mr. Norton's chief
public volume is his 'Church Building in the Middle Ages. ' Here by
three noble examples - the cathedrals of Venice, Siena, and Florence
-the author illustrates his favorite thesis. A poem, more perhaps
than a picture or a statue, may be in large part the miracle of a
moment, the fruit of creative genius manifested in a single man:
into a supreme masterpiece of architecture the physical and moral
character of a whole race is built, and therefore finds therein its
fullest expression.
Mr. Norton may also well count as a great service to art the
foundation of an "Archæological Institute of America," which he
served for many years as president and most active member. This
society sent out the first American archæological expedition,—to As-
sos in Asia Minor, 1881-3,-founded the American School of Classical
Studies at Athens, and has just shared in the creation of the sister
school in Rome. This movement has already gone far toward revo-
lutionizing and giving fresh life to the study of classical antiquity
in America. For a series of years also Mr. Norton shared with his
friend Lowell the editorial work of the scholarly old North American
Review: a publication which is still painfully missed, for it has no
real successor.
Amid all these heavy cares, shared by comparatively few help-
ers, Mr. Norton has answered cheerfully in every crisis to the call
of civic and patriotic duty. (The remarkable reappearance of the
"scholar in politics » during the last two decades has indeed nowhere
been more striking than at Harvard. ) Lastly, this busy student,
teacher, and author has responded no less patiently to every call,
however unreasonable, on his personal sympathy. Many an old Har-
vard man will recall, with sincere remorse, how often his crude intel-
lectual ambitions or moral perplexities were suffered to encroach on
crowded hours and limited physical strength. Toward his chosen
## p. 10710 (#590) ##########################################
10710
CHARLES ELIOT NORTON
friends, death itself does not interrupt his devotion. Not only Low-
ell's poetry and letters and Curtis's speeches, but Emerson's and
Carlyle's correspondence, have found in Mr. Norton a judicious and
laborious editor.
Altogether, it would be difficult to find a better example than
this to illustrate the happy use of moderate wealth and of inherited
scholarly tastes, for lifelong self-improvement and many-sided useful-
ness. The man of unwearying self-culture, moreover, sets an exam-
ple of that ideal which all may in due measure attain.
THE BUILDING OF ORVIETO CATHEDRAL
From Notes of Travel and Study in Italy. Copyright 1859, by Charles Eliot
Norton. Reprinted by consent of the Author, and of Houghton, Mifflin
& Co. , publishers.
THE
HE best Gothic architecture, wherever it may be found, af-
fords evidence that the men who executed it were moved
by a true fervor of religious faith. In building a church,
they did not forget that it was to be the house of God. No
portion of their building was too minute, no portion too obscure,
to be perfected with thorough and careful labor. The work was
not let out by contract, or taken up as a profitable job. The
architect of a cathedral might live all his life within the shadow
of its rising walls, and die no richer than when he gave the
sketch; but he was well repaid by the delight of seeing his
design grow from an imagination to a reality, and by spending
his days in the accepted service of the Lord.
For the building of a cathedral, however, there needs not
only a spirit of religious zeal among the workmen, but a faith
no less ardent among the people for whom the church is de-
signed. The enormous expense of construction - an expense
which for generations must be continued without intermission —
is not to be met except by liberal and willing general contribu-
tions. Papal indulgences and the offerings of pilgrims may add
something to the revenues; but the main cost of building must
be borne by the community over whose house-tops the cathedral
is to rise and to extend its benign protection.
Cathedrals were essentially expressions of the popular will
and the popular faith. They were the work neither of eccle-
siastics nor of feudal barons. They represent in a measure
## p. 10711 (#591) ##########################################
CHARLES ELIOT NORTON
10711
the decline of feudalism, and the prevalence of the democratic
element in society. No sooner did a city achieve its freedom
than its people began to take thought for a cathedral. Of all the
arts, architecture is the most quickly responsive to the instincts.
and the desires of a people. And in the cathedrals, the popular
beliefs, hopes, fears, fancies, and aspirations, found expression,
and were perpetuated in a language intelligible to all. The life
of the Middle Ages is recorded on their walls. When the demo-
cratic element was subdued, as in Cologne by a Prince Bishop,
or in Milan by a succession of tyrants, the cathedral was left
unfinished. When in the fifteenth century, all over Europe, the
turbulent but energetic liberties of the people were suppressed,
the building of cathedrals ceased.
The grandeur, beauty, and lavish costliness of the Duomo at
Orvieto, or of any other of the greater cathedrals, implies a per-
sistency and strength of purpose which could be the result only
of the influence over the souls of men of a deep and abiding
emotion. Minor motives may often have borne a part in the
excitement of feeling,- motives of personal ambition, civic pride,
boastfulness, and rivalry; but a work that requires the combined
and voluntary offerings and labor of successive generations pre-
supposes a condition of the higher spiritual nature which no mo-
tives but those connected with religion are sufficient to support.
It becomes then a question of more than merely historic inter-
est, a question indeed touching the very foundation of the spir-
itual development and civilization of modern Europe, to investigate
the nature and origin of that wide-spread impulse which for two
centuries led the people of different races, and widely diverse
habits of life and thought, to the construction of cathedrals,—
buildings such as our own age, no less than those which have
immediately preceded it, seems incompetent to execute, and in-
different to attempt.
It is impossible to fix a precise date for the first signs of vig-
orous and vital consciousness which gave token of the birth of a
new life out of the dead remains of the ancient world. The tenth
century is often spoken of as the darkest period of the Dark
Ages; but even in its dull sky there were some breaks of light,
and very soon after it had passed the dawn began to brighten.
The epoch of the completion of a thousand years from the birth
of Christ, which had, almost from the first preaching of Christ-
ianity, been looked forward to as the time for the destruction
## p. 10712 (#592) ##########################################
10712
CHARLES ELIOT NORTON
of the world and the advent of the Lord to judge the earth,
had passed without the fulfillment of these ecclesiastical prophe-
cies and popular anticipations. There can be little doubt that
among the mass of men there was a sense of relief, naturally
followed by a certain invigoration of spirit. The eleventh cen-
tury was one of comparative intellectual vigor. The twelfth was
still more marked by mental activity and force. The world was
fairly awake. Civilization was taking the first steps of its mod-
ern course. The relations of the various classes of society were
changing. A wider liberty of thought and action was estab-
lished; and while this led to a fresh exercise of individual power
and character, it conduced also to combine men together in new
forms of united effort for the attainment of common objects and
in the pursuit of common interests.
Corresponding with, but perhaps subsequent by a short inter-
val to, the pervading intellectual movement, was a strong and
quickening development of the moral sense among men. The
periods distinguished in modern history by a condition of intel-
lectual excitement and fervor have been usually, perhaps always,
followed at a short interval by epochs of more or less intense
moral energy, which has borne a near relation to the nature
of the moral elements in the previous intellectual movement.
The Renaissance, an intellectual period of pure immorality, was
followed close by the Reformation, whose first characteristic was
that of protest. The Elizabethan age, in which the minds of
men were full of large thoughts, and their imaginations rose to
the highest flights, led in the noble sacrifices, the great achieve-
ments, the wild vagaries of Puritanism. The age of Voltaire and
the infidels was followed by the fierce energy, the infidel moral-
ity of the French Revolution. And so at this earlier period, the
general intellectual awakening, characterized as it was by simple
impulses, and regulated in great measure by the teachings of
the Church, produced a strong outbreak of moral earnestness
which exhibited itself in curiously similar forms through the
whole of Europe.
The immense amount of labor employed in the construction,
and of labor of the most diverse description, from the highest
efforts of the inventive imagination to the simplest mechanical
hammering of blocks of stone,-led to a careful organization of
the whole body of workmen, and to the setting aside of a special
building, the Loggia, on the Cathedral square, for the use of the
## p. 10713 (#593) ##########################################
CHARLES ELIOT NORTON
10713
masters in the different arts. Each art had its chief, and over
all presided "the Master of the Masters," skilled no less in paint-
ing, mosaic, and sculpture, than in architecture. The larger
number of the most accomplished artists came at this time from
Siena and Pisa, where the growth of the arts had a little earlier
spring than in Florence. Whatever designs and models were
required for any portion of the work were first submitted for
approval to the head of the special art to which they belonged;
and if approved by him, were then laid before the Master of the
Masters, and the Board of Superintendents of the work. These
officers occupied a house opposite the front of the Duomo, in
which they assembled for deliberation, and where the records of
their proceedings were kept in due form by a notary, who every
week registered the works accomplished, the cost of materials,
and the wages of those employed on the building.
Beside the masters and men at work at Orvieto, many others
were distributed in various parts of Italy, employed in obtaining
materials, and especially in quarrying and cutting marble for the
Cathedral. Black marble was got from the quarries near Siena,
alabaster from Sant' Antimo, near Radicofani, and white marble
from the mountains of Carrara. But the supply of the richest
and rarest marbles came from Rome, the ruins of whose ancient
magnificence afforded ample stores of costliest material to the
builders not only of the Papal city itself, but of Naples, of Orvi-
eto, and of many another Italian town. The Greek statuary
marble which had once formed part of some ancient temple was
transferred to the hands of the new sculptors, to be worked into
forms far different in character and in execution from those of
Grecian art. The accumulated riches of pagan Rome were dis-
tributed for the adornment of Christian churches.
To destroy the remains of paganism was regarded as a
scarcely less acceptable service than to erect new buildings for
Christian worship. Petrarch had not yet begun to lament the
barbarism of such destruction. The beauty of the ancient world
was recognized as yet only by a few artists, powerless to save its
vanishing remains. Not yet had the intoxicating sense of this
beauty begun to recorrupt and re-effeminate Italy. A century
later, Rome began to preserve in part the few remaining memo-
rials of her ancient splendor; and not many years after, the
Renaissance, with its degraded taste and debasing principles, set
in, and the influence of ancient art on modern morals was dis-
played.
## p. 10714 (#594) ##########################################
CHARLES ELIOT NORTON
10714
The workmen who labored in quarrying at Rome during the
winter retired in summer to the healthy heights of the Alban
mountains; and there, among the ruins of ancient villas, continued
their work, and thence dispatched the blocks, on wagons drawn
by buffaloes, to their distant destination. The entries in the
book of the records of the Fabbrica show with what a network
of laborers, in the service of the Cathedral, the neighboring prov-
inces were overspread. Thus, under date of the 13th of Sep-
tember, 1321, there is an entry of the expense of the transport
of marbles, and of travertine for coarse work, from Valle del
Cero, from Barontoli, from Tivoli, and from Rigo on the Tiber;
and on the 11th of the same month, sixty florins of gold and
fourteen lire in silver were paid for the transport, with sixteen
pairs of buffaloes, from the forest of Aspretolo, of sixteen loads
of fir timber for the soffit of the Cathedral, and one beam of the
largest size. Again, there is an entry of the payment for bring-
ing four great pieces of marble, of the weight of 8,100 pounds,
from the quarter of St. Paul at Rome; and a little later another
for 14,250 pounds of marble, also from Rome. On the 21st of
June, nine lire and eleven soldi had been spent in the purchase
of an ass,-"quem somarium Mag. Laurentius caput Magistrorum
operis et Camerarius emerunt pro portandis ferris et rebus Magis-
trorum operis Romam. " From the quarry of Montepisi came
loads of marble for the main portal and for the side-doors; and
from Arezzo, famous of old for its red vases; was brought clay
for the glass furnace for the making of mosaics. On the 3d of
August, a messenger was dispatched with letters from the archi-
tect to the workmen at Albano, "Magistris operis qui laborant
marmora apud Castrum Albani, prope Urbem. " Such entries as
these extend over many years; and show not only the activ-
ity displayed in the building, but also its enormous costliness, and
the long foresight and wide knowledge of means required in its
architect.
Trains of wagons, loaded with material for the Cathedral, made
their slow progress toward the city from the north and the south,
from the shores of the Adriatic and of the Mediterranean. The
heavy carts which had creaked under their burdens along the
solitudes of the Campagna of the Maremma, which had toiled
up the forest-covered heights that overhang Viterbo, through
the wild passes of Monte Cimino, or whose shouting teamsters
had held back their straining buffaloes down the bare sides of the
mountains of Radicofani, arrived in unending succession in the
## p. 10715 (#595) ##########################################
CHARLES ELIOT NORTON
10715
valley of the Paglia. The worst part of the way, however, still
lay before them in the steep ascent to the uplifted city. But here
the zeal of voluntary labor came in to lighten the work of the
tugging buffaloes. Bands of citizens enrolled themselves to drag
the carts up the rise of the mountain; and on feast days the
people of the neighboring towns flocked in to take their share
in the work, and to gain the indulgences offered to those who
should give a helping hand. We may imagine these processions
of laborers in the service of the house of the Lord advancing to
the sound of the singing of hymns or the chanting of penitential
psalms; but of these scenes no formal description has been left.
The enthusiasm which was displayed was of the same order as
that which, a century before, had been shown at the building of
the magnificent Cathedral of Chartres, but probably less intense
in its expression, owing to the change in the spirit of the times.
Then men and women, sometimes to the number of a thousand,
of all ranks and conditions, harnessed themselves to the wagons
loaded with materials for building, or with supplies for the work-
men. No one was admitted into the company who did not first
make confession of his sins, "and lay down at the foot of the
altar all hatred and anger. " As cart after cart was dragged in
by its band of devotees, it was set in its place in a circle of
wagons around the church. Candles were lighted upon them all,
as upon so many altars. At night the people watched, singing
hymns and songs of praise, or inflicting discipline upon them-
selves, with prayers for the forgiveness of their sins.
Processions of Juggernaut, camp-meetings, the excitements of
a revival, are exhibitions under another form of the spirit shown
in these enrollments of the people as beasts of burden. Such
excitements rarely leave any noble or permanent result. But
it was the distinctive characteristic of this period of religious
enthusiasm that there were men honestly partaking in the gen-
eral emotion, yet of such strong individuality of genius that
instead of being carried away by the wasteful current of feeling,
they were able to guide and control to great and noble purposes
the impulsive activity and bursting energies of the time. Reli-
gious excitements so called, of whatever kind, imply one of two
things: either a morbid state of the physical or mental system, or
a low and materialistic conception of the truths of the spiritual
life. They belong as much to the body as to the soul, and they
seek vent for the energies they arouse, in physical manifestations.
## p. 10716 (#596) ##########################################
10716
CHARLES ELIOT NORTON
Between the groaning of a set of miserable sinners on the anx-
ious seats, and the toiling of men and women at the ropes of
carts laden with stone for a church, there is a close relation.
The cause and nature of the emotion which influences them are
the same. The difference of its mode of exhibition arises from
original differences of character, from changes in religious creeds,
from the varied circumstances of different ages. It is a difference
exhibited in the contrast between the bare boards of a Methodist
meeting-house and the carved walls of a Catholic cathedral.
THE DOME OF BRUNELLESCHI
From Historical Studies of Church Building in the Middle Ages. ' Copyright
1880, by Harper & Brothers. Reprinted by consent of Author and
Publishers.
IN
N THE chapter-house- the so-called Spanish chapel- of Santa
Maria Novella, is one of the most interesting pictures of the
fourteenth century. It has been ascribed, rightly or wrongly
is of little consequence, to the great Sienese master Simone
Memmi. It represents, in a varied and crowded composition of
many scenes, the services and the exaltation of St. Dominic and
his order. The artist may well have had in his mind the splen-
did eulogy of the saint which Dante heard from St. Bonaventura
in Paradise. As the type and image of the visible Church, the
painter had depicted the Duomo of Florence-not unfinished, as
it was at the time, but completed, and representing, we may
believe, in its general features, the original project of Arnolfo,
although the details are rather in the spirit of the delicate Gothic
work of Orcagna's school than in that of an earlier time.
central area of the church is covered by an octagonal dome that
rises from a cornice on a level with a roof of the nave, and is
adorned at each angle with the figure of an angel.
When the church now, at the beginning of the fifteenth
century, was approaching completion, this original project of
an octagonal dome still seemed the only plan practicable for the
covering of the intersection of nave and transept; but the con-
struction of such a work had been rendered vastly more difficult
by the immense increase in the original dimensions. The area to
be spanned was enormous, for the diameter of the octagon was
now about one hundred and thirty-five feet. The difficulty was
## p. 10717 (#597) ##########################################
CHARLES ELIOT NORTON
10717
the greater from the height of the walls from which the dome
must spring. No Gothic builder had vaulted such an area as
this. Since the Pantheon was built, no architect had attempted
a dome with such a span; and the dome of the Pantheon itself,
with a diameter of one hundred and forty-three feet, rose from
a wall that was but seventy-two feet in height. The dome of
St. Sophia, the supreme work of the Byzantine builders, with the
resources of the Empire at their command, had a diameter of
but one hundred and four feet, and the height from the ground
to its very summit was but one hundred and seventy-nine feet.
The records of architecture could not show such a dome as this
must be. Where was the architect to be found who would
venture to undertake its construction? What were the means he
could employ for its execution? Such were the questions that
pressed upon those who had the work in charge, and which
busied the thoughts of the builders of the time.
It cannot now be determined, and it is of little importance,
whether Brunelleschi's object in going to Rome was as distinctly
defined beforehand in his own mind as Vasari declares in the
statement that he had two most grand designs: one to bring to
light again good architecture; the other to find the means, if he
could, of vaulting the cupola of St. Mary of the Flower, "an
intention of which he said nothing to Donatello or any living.
soul; "or whether, as the anonymous biographer implies, this
object gradually took shape in his thought as he studied the
remains of Roman antiquity, acquainting himself with the forms
and proportions of classic buildings, and with the unsurpassed
methods of Roman construction. But this journey of Brunelles-
chi and Donatello, that they might learn, and learning revive, "the
good ancient art," is one of the capital incidents in the modern
Renaissance. These were the two men in all Florence, at the
beginning of the fifteenth century, of deepest nature, of most
various and original genius. They were in little sympathy with
the temper of the Middle Ages. For them the charm of its
finest moods was lost. The spirit that had given form to Gothic
art had always been foreign to Tuscan artists. The traditions of
an earlier time had never wholly failed to influence their work.
And now the worth and significance of ancient art, first recog-
nized by Niccola Pisano a century and a half earlier, were felt
as never before. The work of the scholars of the fourteenth
century, in the collection and study of the fragments of ancient
.
## p. 10718 (#598) ##########################################
10718
CHARLES ELIOT NORTON
culture, was bearing fruit. For a hundred years the progress in
letters and the arts in Italy had been quickened by the increas-
ing knowledge of the past; and with each step of advance men
had not only felt deeper and more inspiring delight in the ideals
of the classic world, but had found more and more instruction
in the models which its works presented. Through the creations
of the art of former days nature herself was revealed to them in
new aspects. Their reverence for the teachings of the ancients
was often uncritical and indiscriminate, but the zeal with which
they sought them was sincere and invigorating. It was not till
a later time, when the first eagerness of enthusiasm had given
place to a dry pedantry of investigation, that the study of classic
models allured a weaker generation from the paths of nature and
independence into those of artificiality and imitation.
Brunelleschi was the first artist to visit Rome with fully open
modern eyes.
From morning till night, day after day, he and
Donatello were at work unearthing half-buried ruins, measuring
columns and entablatures, digging up hidden fragments, search-
ing for whatever might reveal the secrets of ancient time. The
common people fancied them to be seekers for buried treasure;
but the treasure for which they sought was visible only to one
who had, like Brunelleschi, as his biographer says, "buono occhio
mentale," a clear mental eye.
For many years the greater part of Brunelleschi's life was
spent in Rome. He had sold a little farm that he owned at
Settignano, near Florence, to obtain the means of living; but
falling short of money after a while, he turned to the art in
which he had served his apprenticeship, and gained his livelihood
by work as a goldsmith. The condition of Rome at this time.
was wretched in the extreme. Nothing was left of the dignity
of the ancient city but its ruins. There was no settled civic
order, no regular administration of law or justice. Life and
property were insecure. The people were poor, suffering, and
turbulent. Rome was the least civilized city of Italy. Its aspect
was as wretched as its condition. Large tracts within its walls
were vacant. Its inhabited portions were a labyrinth of filthy
lanes. Many churches, built in earlier centuries, were neglected
and falling to ruin. There was no respect for the monuments
of former times. Many were buried under heaps of the foul-
est rubbish; many were used as quarries of stone for common
walls; many were cumbered by mean buildings, or occupied as
―
## p. 10719 (#599) ##########################################
CHARLES ELIOT NORTON
10719
strongholds. The portico of the Pantheon was filled with stalls
and booths; the arcades of the Colosseum were blocked up with
rude structures used for the most various purposes; the Forum
was crowded with a confused mass of low dwellings. Ancient
marbles, fragments of splendid sculpture, were often calcined for
lime. The reawakening interest in antiquity which was inspiring
the scholars and artists of Florence, and which was beginning
to modify profoundly the culture and the life of Europe, was
not yet shared by those who dwelt within the city which was its
chief source, and reverence for Rome was nowhere less felt than
in Rome itself.
But the example and the labors of Brunelleschi were opening
the way to change. He was the pioneer along a path leading
to modern times. In the midst of conditions that must have
weighed heavily upon him, he continued the diligent study of
the remains of ancient art, investigating especially such struct-
ures as the Pantheon and the Baths, for the purpose of learning
the methods adopted in their construction.
Meantime his repute was slowly advancing at home; and
when at intervals he visited Florence, he was consulted in re-
spect to the public and private buildings with which the flour-
ishing city was adorning herself. The work on the Duomo was
steadily proceeding. The eastern tribune was finished in 1407;
the others were approaching completion. The original plan of a
dome springing from the level of the roof of the nave had been
recognized as unfit for the larger church. Such a dome would
have had too heavy and too low a look. It had been decided
that the dome must be lifted above the level of the roof upon a
massive octagonal drum; and already in 1417 the occhi, or round
lights, of the drum were constructing, and the time was close at
hand when the structure would be ready for the beginning of
the dome itself. The overseers of the work were embarrassed
by the difficulty of the task by which they were confronted,
and knew not how to proceed. If a framework for the centring
of the dome were to be built up from the ground, they stood
aghast at the quantity of timber required for it, and at the enor-
mous cost; so that it seemed to them well-nigh an impossibility,
or to speak more truly, absolutely impossible.
«<
The Board of Works sought advice from Brunelleschi. But
if the master builders had seen difficulties, Philip showed them
far more. And some one asking, Is there, then, no mode of
## p. 10720 (#600) ##########################################
10720
CHARLES ELIOT NORTON
-
erecting it? Philip, who was ingenious also in discourse, replied
that if the thing were really impossible, it could not be done:
but that if it were not so, there ought to be some one in the
world who could do the work; and seeing that it was a religious
edifice, the Lord God, to whom nothing was impossible, would
surely not abandon it. " Further consultations were held; and on
May 19th, 1417, the Opera voted to give Philip di Ser Brunellesco
"pro bona gratuitate" — for his labors in making drawings and
employing himself concerning the cupola - ten golden florins.
No more characteristic or remarkable design was pro-
duced during the whole period of the Renaissance than this with
which its great architectural achievements began. It was the
manifesto of a revolution in architecture. It marks an epoch
in the art.
Such a dome as Brunelleschi proposed to erect had
never been built. The great domes of former times- the dome
of the Pantheon, the dome of Santa Sophia-had been designed
solely for their interior effect: they were not impressive or noble
structures from without. But Brunelleschi had conceived a dome
which, grand in its interior aspect, should be even more superb
from without than from within, and which in its stately dimen-
sions and proportions, in its magnificent lift above all the other
edifices of the city of which it formed the centre, should give
the fullest satisfaction to the desire common in the Italian cit-
ies for a monumental expression of the political unity and the
religious faith of their people. His work fulfilled the highest
aim of architecture as a civic art, in being a political symbol,
an image of the life of the State itself. As such no other of the
ultimate forms of architecture was so appropriate as the dome.
Its absolute unity and symmetry, the beautiful shape and pro-
portions of its broad divisions, the strong and simple energy
of its upwardly converging lines, all satisfied the sentiment of
Florence, compounded as it was of the most varied elements,-
civic, political, religious, and æsthetic.
At last, in 1420, all these masters from beyond the mountains
were assembled in Florence, together with those of Tuscany, and
all the ingenious architects of the city, among them Brunelleschi
himself. On a certain day they all met at the works of S. Maria
del Fiore, together with the consuls and the Board of Works
and a choice of the most intelligent citizens; and then one after
another spoke his mind as to the mode in which the dome might
be built. "It was a fine thing to hear the strange and diverse
## p. 10721 (#601) ##########################################
CHARLES ELIOT NORTON
10721
opinions on the matter. " Some advised to build up a structure
from the ground to support the cupola while it was in process of
building. Others, for the same end, proposed heaping up a high
mound of earth, in which pieces of money should be buried, so
that when the work was done the common people would carry
away the earth for the sake of what they might find in it. Others.
again urged that the cupola be built of pumice-stone, for the
sake of lightness. Only Philip said that the dome could be
built without any such support of timber or masonry or earth,
and was laughed at by all for such a wild and impracticable
notion; and growing hot in the explanation and defense of his
plan of construction, and being told to go but not consenting,
he was at last carried by main force from the assembly, "fu
portato di peso fuori," - all men holding him stark mad. And
Philip was accustomed to say afterwards that he was ashamed at
this time to go about Florence, for fear of hearing it said, "See
that fool there, who talks so wildly. " The overseers of the work
were distracted by the bewildering diversity of counsels; and
"Philip, who had spent so many years in studies for the sake
of having this work, knew not what to do, and was oftentimes
tempted to depart from Florence. Yet, wishing to win his
object, he armed himself with patience, as was needful, having
so much to endure; for he knew the brains of that city never
stood long fixed on one resolve. Philip might have shown a
little model which he had below, but he did not wish to show
it; being aware of the small understanding of the consuls, the
envy of the workmen, and the little stability of the citizens, who
favored now this, now that, according to their pleasure. What,
then, Philip had not been able to do in the assembly he began
to try with individuals; and speaking now to this consul, now to
this member of the Board of Works, and in like wise to many
citizens, showing them part of his design, he brought them to
determine to assign the work either to him or to one of the
foreigners. Whereby the consuls and the Board of Works and
the citizens being encouraged, they caused a new assembly to be
held, and the architects disputed of the matter; but they were
all beaten down and overcome by Philip with abundant reasons.
And here it is said that the dispute about the egg arose in this
manner. " The other architects urged him to explain his scheme
in detail, and to show them the model he had made of the
structure; but this he refused, and finally proposed to them that
XVIII-671
## p. 10722 (#602) ##########################################
CHARLES ELIOT NORTON
10722
the man who could prove his capacity by making an egg stand
on end on a smooth bit of marble should build the cupola. To
this they assented. All tried in vain; and then Philip, taking
the egg and striking it upon the marble, made it stand. The
others, offended, declared they could have done as much. "Ay,"
said Philip, "and so, after seeing my model, you could build the
cupola. "
It was accordingly resolved that he should have charge of the
conduct of the work; and he was directed to give fuller infor-
mation concerning his plans to the consuls and Board of Works.
Towards the end of the year 1425, in January (it is to be
remembered that the Florentine year began in March), Brunelles-
chi and Ghiberti, together with one of the Officials of the Cupola
and the head-master of the works, united in an important report
to the Board, as to the work in progress and that which was
to be next undertaken. It is plain from it that the difficulties
of building such a vault without centring were increasing as the
curve ascended. On the inner side of the vault a parapet of
planks was to be made, to protect the scaffolding and to cut off
the sight of the masters from the void beneath them, for their
greater security. "We say nothing of centring," say the builders:
"not that it might not have given greater strength and beauty
to the work," which may well be doubted; "but not having been
started with, a centring would now be undesirable, and could
hardly be made without armature, for the sake of avoiding which
the centring was dispensed with at the beginning. " Brunelles-
chi's genius was sufficient to overcome all the difficulties met
with in accomplishing the bold experiment which he had devised,
and which in its kind still remains without parallel.
Many entries in the records afford a lively impression of
scenes and incidents connected with the building. With all the
precautions that could be taken, the exposure of the workmen to
the risk of falling was great. Two men were thus killed in the
first year of the work. As the dome rose, the danger increased;
and a provision was made that any of the masters or laborers
who preferred to work below might do so, but at wages one
quarter less.
Brunelleschi, finding that owing to the vast height
of the edifice, the builders lost much time in going down for
food and drink, arranged a cook-shop and stalls for the sale of
bread and wine, in the cupola itself. Thenceforth no one was
## p. 10723 (#603) ##########################################
CHARLES ELIOT NORTON
10723
allowed to go down from his work oftener than once a day. But
the supply of wine in the cupola caused a new danger; and an
order was issued by the Board, that "considering the risks which
may daily threaten the master masons who are employed on the
wall of the cupola, on account of the wine that is necessarily
kept in the cupola, from this time forth the clerk of the works
shall not allow any wine to be brought up which has not been
diluted with at least one third of water. " But the workmen
were reckless; and amused themselves, among other ways, in let-
ting themselves and each other down on the outside of the dome
in mere sport, or to take young birds from their nests, till at
length the practice was forbidden by an order of the Board.
So year by year the work went on; the walls slowly rounding
upwards.
·
The work on the Duomo was now actively pushed forward.
The second chain to resist the thrust of the inner cupola was
constructed; and in 1432 the dome had reached such a height
that Brunelleschi was ordered to make a model of the closing of
its summit, and also a model of the lantern that was to stand on
it, in order that full consideration might be given to the work,
and due provision for it made in advance. Two years more
passed, years in which the city was busied with public affairs of
great concern both at home and abroad; when at length, on the
12th of June, 1434, just fourteen years from its beginning, the
cupola closed over the central space of the Duomo. It had
grown slowly, marvelous in the eyes of all beholders, who saw
its walls rise, curving over the void without apparent support,
held suspended in the air as if by miracle. Brunelleschi's fame
was secure; henceforth his work was chief part of Florence.
## p. 10724 (#604) ##########################################
10724
NOVALIS
(FRIEDRICH VON HARDENBERG)
(1772-1801)
RIEDRICH VON HARDENBERG, better known under the pseudonym
of Novalis, was born upon the family estate of Wiederstedt,
Mansfeld, Germany, May 2d, 1772. His early education and
environment were conducive to the development of the best that was
in him. His father, the Baron von Hardenberg, was in every respect
an exemplary man and a wise father; his mother was loving and
pious: and the family circle, which included
seven sons and four daughters, was bound
together by the closest ties of affection and
congeniality.
As a lad, Novalis was delicate and re-
tiring, and of a dreamy disposition. He
withdrew from the rough sports of his
companions, and amused himself by read-
ing and composing poetry. He wrote po-
etical plays, in which he and his brothers
enacted the characters of the spirits of
the earth and air and water. His parents
were Moravians; and the strict, religious
character of his training had a deep effect
upon his sensitive nature. His thoughts
dwelt constantly upon the unseen. His eyes burned with the light
of an inward fire, and he wandered about in a kind of day-dream, in
which the intangible was more real than his material surroundings.
A more healthful change took place during his ninth year. A severe
attack of illness seems to have aroused his dormant powers of resist-
ance; and after his recovery he was not only better physically, but
brighter and more cheerful, and far more awake to temporalities.
His education now began in earnest. He applied himself diligently
to his studies, and entered the University of Jena in 1789. Here he
met Fichte and Friedrich Schlegel; an acquaintance that was fruit-
ful of results, for with Novalis a friendship was an epoch, and his
ardent spirit readily yielded itself to affinitive influences. His pas-
sionate friendship for Schiller, whom he also met at Jena, and later
NOVALIS
## p. 10725 (#605) ##########################################
NOVALIS
10725
for Goethe, were molds for his plastic nature. He remained at
Jena until 1792, when he went to the University of Leipsic with his
brother Erasmus; and the following year he finished his studies at
Wittenberg.
The future character of his pursuits indicates his intention of fol-
lowing a business career. He went to Arnstadt, where, under the
instruction of Just, the principal judiciary of the district, he applied
himself to practical affairs. In 1795 he was appointed to a position.
in the Saxony salt works, of which his father was director. In the
mean time, early in the spring of 1795, he had made the acquaintance
of Sophie von Kuhn, a beautiful child of thirteen, for whom he at
once conceived a poetic passion. In spite of her youth, they were
betrothed; but Sophie died just after her fifteenth birthday, and
Novalis entered upon a period of darkness and despair that threat-
ened to engulf him. Shortly after her death, his brother Erasmus
died at Weissenfels; and this double grief seemed to transfigure No-
valis. For him the boundary line between the seen and the unseen
disappeared. He longed for death, and yet was in a state of exalta-
tion. He wrote to his brother Charles: "Be comforted. Erasmus has
conquered. The flowers of the beloved wreath here drop off one by
one, in order that there they may be reunited into one more beauti-
ful and eternal. "
It was during this time and a little later that he wrote some of
the most beautiful and spirituel of his compositions, notably Hymnen
an die Nacht' (Hymns to the Night). These fragmentary pieces of
prose are the breathings of a poet's soul. "I turn aside to the holy,
ineffable, mysterious Night. Afar lies the world submerged in the
deep vault of heaven. Waste and lonely is her place. The chords
of the bosom are stirred by deep sadness. I will descend in dew-
drops and mix myself with the ashes. Distances of memory, wishes
of youth, dreams of childhood, the short joys and vain hopes of a
whole long life, come in gray apparel, like the evening mist after the
sunset. In other spaces Light has pitched its joyful tents. Will it
never return to its children who await it with the faith of innocence ? »
With the intention of diverting his mind from his sorrow, his
parents persuaded him to carry out a plan of his younger days, and
undertake a course of study in the Mining School of Freiburg. Here,
amid congenial friends and in the interests of his pursuits, he grad-
ually recovered health and cheerfulness. He loved again, and shortly
became engaged to Julie, the daughter of the famous mineralogist
Charpentier. Novalis remained in Freiburg until the summer of
1799, when he returned to Weissenfels, where he was made assessor
and was appointed under his father chief judiciary of the Thurin-
gian district. He now visited often at Jena, where he established
## p. 10726 (#606) ##########################################
10726
NOVALIS
the warmest relations with Ritter, Schelling, Wilhelm Schlegel, and
Tieck; of whom the last, in connection with Friedrich Schlegel, be-
came his biographer and literary executor.
Always delicate, always spiritually toying with death, at last the
invincible forces that had so long held aloof descended upon him.
In August of the year 1800 he became very ill; and though he still
attended to the duties of his office, and wrote constantly, his weak-
ness increased, and on the 25th of March, 1801, he died at the house
of his parents in Weissenfels, not quite twenty-nine years of age.
The influence of Novalis was due more to the time of his ap-
pearance than to his power as a writer; and it is as a factor in the
evolution of German literature, rather than by the amount or even
the quality of his work, that he is to be judged. His entire writings
are comprised within two or three small volumes, and the years of
his literary activity were but six, included in the period between the
close of his student days and his death; and yet the name of Nova-
lis is the brightest of the old Romantic school. Although his early
death precluded the possibility of his fulfilling the expectations of his
friends, who regarded him as the torch-bearer in the struggle against
the materialism of the "Enlighteners," yet his union of religion and
poetry, his philosophy, and his deep faith in Christianity, made him
a power quite unique in the world of letters. 'Geistliche Lieder'
(Spiritual Songs) are matchless of their kind; and all his poems have
an illusive beauty and fragrance quite impossible to translate.
A great part of the works of Novalis are made up of miscellaneous
fragments, philosophical reflections, aphorisms, and irrelevant thoughts
set down in disconnected sentences. Many of these were published
in the Athenæum under the title of Blumenstaub' (Flower-Dust),
and many more were collected from his papers after the death of the
author. Die Lehrlinge zu Sais' (The Disciples at Sais) is a frag-
ment of an unfinished psychological romance, which in its vagueness
and philosophical speculation has many points of resemblance to his
later and also unfinished work, Heinrich von Ofterdingen. '
A new art, before its limitations have been reached, and before it
has definitely assumed its ultimate shape, may develop many extrav
agances. Novalis was a leader in the new school of Romanticism,
and 'Heinrich von Ofterdingen' was a protest against rationalism.
This allegorical romance, if indeed what is pure allegory may be
called a romance, was written during the last months of Novalis's
life. It was intended to be an apotheosis of poetry, and in this
phenomenal piece of literature there existed no law either human or
divine. The poet's fancy is all supreme. Dreams and allegories may
transcend all laws of mind and matter; nothing astonishes, nothing
is impossible. Heinrich von Ofterdingen in his search for the Blue
## p. 10727 (#607) ##########################################
NOVALIS
10727
Flower, the absolute ideal, represents the struggle of the spirit of
poesy against the environment of the material. Part first, 'Expecta-
tion,' which is completed, describes the gradual preparation of the
hero for the reception of this ethereal essence. Part second, The
Fulfillment,' has been completed in outline by Tieck, the author's
intimate friend and literary confidant, and is supposed to represent
the full blossoming of the poet's soul. "To the poet who compre-
hends the nature of his art to its centre, nothing appears contradict-
ory and strange. To him all riddles are solved. By the magic of the
imagination he can unite all ages and all worlds. Miracles disappear,
and everything transforms itself into miracles. " And so throughout
the tale the marvels advance by gigantic strides, until at the end it
only dimly stirs us to learn that "Heinrich plucks the Blue Flower
and releases Matilda from her enchantment, but she is again lost to
him. He becomes insensible through pain, and turns into a stone.
Edda (the Blue Flower, the Eastern Maiden, Matilda) sacrifices her-
self upon the stone, which is then transformed into a melodious tree.
Cyane hews down the tree and burns it, and herself with it. He
now becomes a golden ram which Edda - that is, Matilda-must sac-
rifice, when he again becomes man," etc.
'Heinrich von Ofterdingen' as a romance is unworthy of the place
assigned it by contemporary critics. Although full of passages of
rare beauties, and ideas which outstrip their time, it is nevertheless
vague, obscure, and chaotic. Its importance lies in its effect as the
leaven of the new literature just springing into being. It embodies
all the beauties, as well as all the faults and extravagances, of the old
Romantic school, before time had pruned its growth and developed it
into a fruitful maturity.
HYMNS TO THE NIGHT
WHAT
HAT living, feeling being loves not the gorgeous hues which
proclaim the dawn of day?
The ever-moving stars, as they whirl in boundless.
ether, hail the dawn-bright herald of the day, the glistening
rocks hail its rays, the tender growing plants raise their pure
eyes rejoicing, and the wild animal joins in the happy chorus.
which welcomes another day.
More than all these rejoices the glorious Being, the Monarch
of the Earth. His deep, thoughtful eyes survey his creation.
His melodious voice summons nature to resume her magic works.
He binds or looses a million ties, and stamps all earthly life with
## p. 10728 (#608) ##########################################
10728
NOVALIS
some impress of his power. His presence reveals the marvels
of the Kingdom of Earth.
But sacred Night, with her unspoken mysteries, draws me to
her. The world is far, far away, buried in a deep and lonely
grave. My heart is full of sadness. Let me dissolve in drops
of dew, and join the beloved dust. Long past memories, youth-
ful ambitions, childhood's dreams, a long life of brief joys and
blighted hopes, pass before me-dusky forms, like evening mist.
In another region merry day returns triumphant. Will it
never return to us, its children, who await its coming in child-
like trust?
What stirs this weary heart, and banishes my sorrow? Dost
thou feel pity for us, O holy Night?
What soothing influence pervades my being? What hand
sheds costly opiate on my throbbing heart? The wings of fancy
no longer droop, fresh energy arises within me. In joyful sur-
prise I see a calm, grave face bend lovingly over me; the face
of a tender mother, beaming with eternal youth. How poor and
childish in comparison are the joys of day, how blessed and con-
soling the return of night!
The active work of day is over; the boundless ocean of space,
with its lustrous spheres, proclaims Night's eternal power and
presence.
The eyes of the Night are countless hosts of glittering orbs,
a glory far exceeding that of Day. They see far beyond the
most distant of those countless hosts; they need no light to
perceive the unfathomable depth of that loving Spirit who fills
boundless space with happiness.
All hail, Queen of the Earth! thou herald of holier worlds,
thou revealer of holy love! Much-loved sun of the night, thou
art her gift.
My whole being awakes. I am thine, and thou art mine.
Night has aroused me to life and manhood. Consume my earthly
frame, draw me into deeper and closer union, and may our
bridal night endure for ever.
MUST Day return again? Will earthly influences never cease?
Unholy toil desecrates the heavenly calm of Night. When shall
the mystic sacrifice of love burn for ever? Light has its own
fixed limits, but Night has a boundless unfathomable dominion;
the reign of Sleep has no end. Holy Sleep! shed thy blest balm
## p. 10729 (#609) ##########################################
NOVALIS
10729
on the hallowed Night of this earthly sphere. Only fools fail
to understand thee, and know of no other sleep than the shades
which the actual night casts over us in kindly pity. They see
thee not in the purple blood of the grape, in the golden oil of
the almond, in the dusty sap of the poppy. They guess not that
it is thou who hoverest around the tender maiden, making her
heart the temple of Heaven; nor dream that it is thou, heavenly
messenger, who bearest the key which opens the dwellings of the
Blessed.
I KNOW when the last day shall come when Light no longer
shall be scared by Night and Love: then slumber shall not cease,
and existence shall become an endless dream. Heavenly weari-
ness oppresses me, long and dreamy was my pilgrimage to the
Holy Grave, crushing was the cross I bore. He who has drunk
of the crystal wave which wells forth from the gloomy grave
on which earth's billows break, he who has stood on earth's
border-land and perceived that new country, the dwelling of
Night, returns not to the tumult of life, to the land where light
reigns amid ceaseless unrest.
―――
He builds himself a refuge far from the tumult-a peaceful
home, and awaits the welcome hour when he too shall be drawn
into the crystal wave. All that savors of earth floats on the
surface, and is driven back by tempests; but what love has hal-
lowed flows in hidden channels, to another region where it min-
gles- a fragrant essence—with those loved ones who have fallen
asleep.
Ah! merry Light, thou still arousest the weary to their task,
and strivest to inspire me too with cheerful life; but thou hast
no charm to tempt me from my cherished memories. With
joy I watch the busy hands, and look around to fulfill my own
duty; I praise thy glorious works, admire the matchless blending
of thy cunning designs, watch the varied workings of the busy
hours, and seek to discover the symmetry and laws which rule
the marvels of endless space and measureless ages.
But my heart remains ever true to Night and her daughter,
creative Love. Canst thou show me one ever-faithful heart?
Has thy sun a friendly glance for me? Do thy stars hold out a
welcoming hand? Do they return the gentle pressure and the
caressing word? Hast thou clothed them in color and beauty?
What joys or pleasure can life offer to outweigh the charm of
## p. 10730 (#610) ##########################################
NOVALIS
10730
death? Does not all that inspires us bear the colors of Night?
Night bears thee gently like a mother; to her thou owest all thy
glory. Thou wouldst have sunk into endless space had not Night
upheld thee, and bound thee, till earth arose. Truly I existed
long ere thou wert: I and my sisters were sent to dwell in thy
world, and hallow it with love, to make it an enduring memorial;
to plant it with unfading flowers. Not yet have these blossoms
opened, few are the traces which mark our way. But the end
of time is at hand; then thou wilt rejoin us, and gently fade
away, full of longing and fervent desire. All thy busy restless-
ness will end in heavenly freedom, a blessed home-coming. With
bitter grief I acknowledge thy forsaking of our home, thine un-
conquered hatred to the old glorious heaven.
But in vain is thy wrath and fury. The Cross stands firm
for ever, the banner of our race.
souls.
THE many scattered races of mankind lay bound for ages in
the grasp of an iron fate.
a poem, itself a highly elaborated masterpiece of rhythmical form,
will not satisfy every reader; but all the thoughts of Dante are here
transferred. It is earnestly to be hoped that the 'Convito' also will
be given to the public in completed form. As originator, president,
and soul of the Dante Society, Mr. Norton must be credited with
most of the modest sum total thus far accomplished on American soil
in Dantesque research and publication.
In the direction of his professional teaching, Mr. Norton's chief
public volume is his 'Church Building in the Middle Ages. ' Here by
three noble examples - the cathedrals of Venice, Siena, and Florence
-the author illustrates his favorite thesis. A poem, more perhaps
than a picture or a statue, may be in large part the miracle of a
moment, the fruit of creative genius manifested in a single man:
into a supreme masterpiece of architecture the physical and moral
character of a whole race is built, and therefore finds therein its
fullest expression.
Mr. Norton may also well count as a great service to art the
foundation of an "Archæological Institute of America," which he
served for many years as president and most active member. This
society sent out the first American archæological expedition,—to As-
sos in Asia Minor, 1881-3,-founded the American School of Classical
Studies at Athens, and has just shared in the creation of the sister
school in Rome. This movement has already gone far toward revo-
lutionizing and giving fresh life to the study of classical antiquity
in America. For a series of years also Mr. Norton shared with his
friend Lowell the editorial work of the scholarly old North American
Review: a publication which is still painfully missed, for it has no
real successor.
Amid all these heavy cares, shared by comparatively few help-
ers, Mr. Norton has answered cheerfully in every crisis to the call
of civic and patriotic duty. (The remarkable reappearance of the
"scholar in politics » during the last two decades has indeed nowhere
been more striking than at Harvard. ) Lastly, this busy student,
teacher, and author has responded no less patiently to every call,
however unreasonable, on his personal sympathy. Many an old Har-
vard man will recall, with sincere remorse, how often his crude intel-
lectual ambitions or moral perplexities were suffered to encroach on
crowded hours and limited physical strength. Toward his chosen
## p. 10710 (#590) ##########################################
10710
CHARLES ELIOT NORTON
friends, death itself does not interrupt his devotion. Not only Low-
ell's poetry and letters and Curtis's speeches, but Emerson's and
Carlyle's correspondence, have found in Mr. Norton a judicious and
laborious editor.
Altogether, it would be difficult to find a better example than
this to illustrate the happy use of moderate wealth and of inherited
scholarly tastes, for lifelong self-improvement and many-sided useful-
ness. The man of unwearying self-culture, moreover, sets an exam-
ple of that ideal which all may in due measure attain.
THE BUILDING OF ORVIETO CATHEDRAL
From Notes of Travel and Study in Italy. Copyright 1859, by Charles Eliot
Norton. Reprinted by consent of the Author, and of Houghton, Mifflin
& Co. , publishers.
THE
HE best Gothic architecture, wherever it may be found, af-
fords evidence that the men who executed it were moved
by a true fervor of religious faith. In building a church,
they did not forget that it was to be the house of God. No
portion of their building was too minute, no portion too obscure,
to be perfected with thorough and careful labor. The work was
not let out by contract, or taken up as a profitable job. The
architect of a cathedral might live all his life within the shadow
of its rising walls, and die no richer than when he gave the
sketch; but he was well repaid by the delight of seeing his
design grow from an imagination to a reality, and by spending
his days in the accepted service of the Lord.
For the building of a cathedral, however, there needs not
only a spirit of religious zeal among the workmen, but a faith
no less ardent among the people for whom the church is de-
signed. The enormous expense of construction - an expense
which for generations must be continued without intermission —
is not to be met except by liberal and willing general contribu-
tions. Papal indulgences and the offerings of pilgrims may add
something to the revenues; but the main cost of building must
be borne by the community over whose house-tops the cathedral
is to rise and to extend its benign protection.
Cathedrals were essentially expressions of the popular will
and the popular faith. They were the work neither of eccle-
siastics nor of feudal barons. They represent in a measure
## p. 10711 (#591) ##########################################
CHARLES ELIOT NORTON
10711
the decline of feudalism, and the prevalence of the democratic
element in society. No sooner did a city achieve its freedom
than its people began to take thought for a cathedral. Of all the
arts, architecture is the most quickly responsive to the instincts.
and the desires of a people. And in the cathedrals, the popular
beliefs, hopes, fears, fancies, and aspirations, found expression,
and were perpetuated in a language intelligible to all. The life
of the Middle Ages is recorded on their walls. When the demo-
cratic element was subdued, as in Cologne by a Prince Bishop,
or in Milan by a succession of tyrants, the cathedral was left
unfinished. When in the fifteenth century, all over Europe, the
turbulent but energetic liberties of the people were suppressed,
the building of cathedrals ceased.
The grandeur, beauty, and lavish costliness of the Duomo at
Orvieto, or of any other of the greater cathedrals, implies a per-
sistency and strength of purpose which could be the result only
of the influence over the souls of men of a deep and abiding
emotion. Minor motives may often have borne a part in the
excitement of feeling,- motives of personal ambition, civic pride,
boastfulness, and rivalry; but a work that requires the combined
and voluntary offerings and labor of successive generations pre-
supposes a condition of the higher spiritual nature which no mo-
tives but those connected with religion are sufficient to support.
It becomes then a question of more than merely historic inter-
est, a question indeed touching the very foundation of the spir-
itual development and civilization of modern Europe, to investigate
the nature and origin of that wide-spread impulse which for two
centuries led the people of different races, and widely diverse
habits of life and thought, to the construction of cathedrals,—
buildings such as our own age, no less than those which have
immediately preceded it, seems incompetent to execute, and in-
different to attempt.
It is impossible to fix a precise date for the first signs of vig-
orous and vital consciousness which gave token of the birth of a
new life out of the dead remains of the ancient world. The tenth
century is often spoken of as the darkest period of the Dark
Ages; but even in its dull sky there were some breaks of light,
and very soon after it had passed the dawn began to brighten.
The epoch of the completion of a thousand years from the birth
of Christ, which had, almost from the first preaching of Christ-
ianity, been looked forward to as the time for the destruction
## p. 10712 (#592) ##########################################
10712
CHARLES ELIOT NORTON
of the world and the advent of the Lord to judge the earth,
had passed without the fulfillment of these ecclesiastical prophe-
cies and popular anticipations. There can be little doubt that
among the mass of men there was a sense of relief, naturally
followed by a certain invigoration of spirit. The eleventh cen-
tury was one of comparative intellectual vigor. The twelfth was
still more marked by mental activity and force. The world was
fairly awake. Civilization was taking the first steps of its mod-
ern course. The relations of the various classes of society were
changing. A wider liberty of thought and action was estab-
lished; and while this led to a fresh exercise of individual power
and character, it conduced also to combine men together in new
forms of united effort for the attainment of common objects and
in the pursuit of common interests.
Corresponding with, but perhaps subsequent by a short inter-
val to, the pervading intellectual movement, was a strong and
quickening development of the moral sense among men. The
periods distinguished in modern history by a condition of intel-
lectual excitement and fervor have been usually, perhaps always,
followed at a short interval by epochs of more or less intense
moral energy, which has borne a near relation to the nature
of the moral elements in the previous intellectual movement.
The Renaissance, an intellectual period of pure immorality, was
followed close by the Reformation, whose first characteristic was
that of protest. The Elizabethan age, in which the minds of
men were full of large thoughts, and their imaginations rose to
the highest flights, led in the noble sacrifices, the great achieve-
ments, the wild vagaries of Puritanism. The age of Voltaire and
the infidels was followed by the fierce energy, the infidel moral-
ity of the French Revolution. And so at this earlier period, the
general intellectual awakening, characterized as it was by simple
impulses, and regulated in great measure by the teachings of
the Church, produced a strong outbreak of moral earnestness
which exhibited itself in curiously similar forms through the
whole of Europe.
The immense amount of labor employed in the construction,
and of labor of the most diverse description, from the highest
efforts of the inventive imagination to the simplest mechanical
hammering of blocks of stone,-led to a careful organization of
the whole body of workmen, and to the setting aside of a special
building, the Loggia, on the Cathedral square, for the use of the
## p. 10713 (#593) ##########################################
CHARLES ELIOT NORTON
10713
masters in the different arts. Each art had its chief, and over
all presided "the Master of the Masters," skilled no less in paint-
ing, mosaic, and sculpture, than in architecture. The larger
number of the most accomplished artists came at this time from
Siena and Pisa, where the growth of the arts had a little earlier
spring than in Florence. Whatever designs and models were
required for any portion of the work were first submitted for
approval to the head of the special art to which they belonged;
and if approved by him, were then laid before the Master of the
Masters, and the Board of Superintendents of the work. These
officers occupied a house opposite the front of the Duomo, in
which they assembled for deliberation, and where the records of
their proceedings were kept in due form by a notary, who every
week registered the works accomplished, the cost of materials,
and the wages of those employed on the building.
Beside the masters and men at work at Orvieto, many others
were distributed in various parts of Italy, employed in obtaining
materials, and especially in quarrying and cutting marble for the
Cathedral. Black marble was got from the quarries near Siena,
alabaster from Sant' Antimo, near Radicofani, and white marble
from the mountains of Carrara. But the supply of the richest
and rarest marbles came from Rome, the ruins of whose ancient
magnificence afforded ample stores of costliest material to the
builders not only of the Papal city itself, but of Naples, of Orvi-
eto, and of many another Italian town. The Greek statuary
marble which had once formed part of some ancient temple was
transferred to the hands of the new sculptors, to be worked into
forms far different in character and in execution from those of
Grecian art. The accumulated riches of pagan Rome were dis-
tributed for the adornment of Christian churches.
To destroy the remains of paganism was regarded as a
scarcely less acceptable service than to erect new buildings for
Christian worship. Petrarch had not yet begun to lament the
barbarism of such destruction. The beauty of the ancient world
was recognized as yet only by a few artists, powerless to save its
vanishing remains. Not yet had the intoxicating sense of this
beauty begun to recorrupt and re-effeminate Italy. A century
later, Rome began to preserve in part the few remaining memo-
rials of her ancient splendor; and not many years after, the
Renaissance, with its degraded taste and debasing principles, set
in, and the influence of ancient art on modern morals was dis-
played.
## p. 10714 (#594) ##########################################
CHARLES ELIOT NORTON
10714
The workmen who labored in quarrying at Rome during the
winter retired in summer to the healthy heights of the Alban
mountains; and there, among the ruins of ancient villas, continued
their work, and thence dispatched the blocks, on wagons drawn
by buffaloes, to their distant destination. The entries in the
book of the records of the Fabbrica show with what a network
of laborers, in the service of the Cathedral, the neighboring prov-
inces were overspread. Thus, under date of the 13th of Sep-
tember, 1321, there is an entry of the expense of the transport
of marbles, and of travertine for coarse work, from Valle del
Cero, from Barontoli, from Tivoli, and from Rigo on the Tiber;
and on the 11th of the same month, sixty florins of gold and
fourteen lire in silver were paid for the transport, with sixteen
pairs of buffaloes, from the forest of Aspretolo, of sixteen loads
of fir timber for the soffit of the Cathedral, and one beam of the
largest size. Again, there is an entry of the payment for bring-
ing four great pieces of marble, of the weight of 8,100 pounds,
from the quarter of St. Paul at Rome; and a little later another
for 14,250 pounds of marble, also from Rome. On the 21st of
June, nine lire and eleven soldi had been spent in the purchase
of an ass,-"quem somarium Mag. Laurentius caput Magistrorum
operis et Camerarius emerunt pro portandis ferris et rebus Magis-
trorum operis Romam. " From the quarry of Montepisi came
loads of marble for the main portal and for the side-doors; and
from Arezzo, famous of old for its red vases; was brought clay
for the glass furnace for the making of mosaics. On the 3d of
August, a messenger was dispatched with letters from the archi-
tect to the workmen at Albano, "Magistris operis qui laborant
marmora apud Castrum Albani, prope Urbem. " Such entries as
these extend over many years; and show not only the activ-
ity displayed in the building, but also its enormous costliness, and
the long foresight and wide knowledge of means required in its
architect.
Trains of wagons, loaded with material for the Cathedral, made
their slow progress toward the city from the north and the south,
from the shores of the Adriatic and of the Mediterranean. The
heavy carts which had creaked under their burdens along the
solitudes of the Campagna of the Maremma, which had toiled
up the forest-covered heights that overhang Viterbo, through
the wild passes of Monte Cimino, or whose shouting teamsters
had held back their straining buffaloes down the bare sides of the
mountains of Radicofani, arrived in unending succession in the
## p. 10715 (#595) ##########################################
CHARLES ELIOT NORTON
10715
valley of the Paglia. The worst part of the way, however, still
lay before them in the steep ascent to the uplifted city. But here
the zeal of voluntary labor came in to lighten the work of the
tugging buffaloes. Bands of citizens enrolled themselves to drag
the carts up the rise of the mountain; and on feast days the
people of the neighboring towns flocked in to take their share
in the work, and to gain the indulgences offered to those who
should give a helping hand. We may imagine these processions
of laborers in the service of the house of the Lord advancing to
the sound of the singing of hymns or the chanting of penitential
psalms; but of these scenes no formal description has been left.
The enthusiasm which was displayed was of the same order as
that which, a century before, had been shown at the building of
the magnificent Cathedral of Chartres, but probably less intense
in its expression, owing to the change in the spirit of the times.
Then men and women, sometimes to the number of a thousand,
of all ranks and conditions, harnessed themselves to the wagons
loaded with materials for building, or with supplies for the work-
men. No one was admitted into the company who did not first
make confession of his sins, "and lay down at the foot of the
altar all hatred and anger. " As cart after cart was dragged in
by its band of devotees, it was set in its place in a circle of
wagons around the church. Candles were lighted upon them all,
as upon so many altars. At night the people watched, singing
hymns and songs of praise, or inflicting discipline upon them-
selves, with prayers for the forgiveness of their sins.
Processions of Juggernaut, camp-meetings, the excitements of
a revival, are exhibitions under another form of the spirit shown
in these enrollments of the people as beasts of burden. Such
excitements rarely leave any noble or permanent result. But
it was the distinctive characteristic of this period of religious
enthusiasm that there were men honestly partaking in the gen-
eral emotion, yet of such strong individuality of genius that
instead of being carried away by the wasteful current of feeling,
they were able to guide and control to great and noble purposes
the impulsive activity and bursting energies of the time. Reli-
gious excitements so called, of whatever kind, imply one of two
things: either a morbid state of the physical or mental system, or
a low and materialistic conception of the truths of the spiritual
life. They belong as much to the body as to the soul, and they
seek vent for the energies they arouse, in physical manifestations.
## p. 10716 (#596) ##########################################
10716
CHARLES ELIOT NORTON
Between the groaning of a set of miserable sinners on the anx-
ious seats, and the toiling of men and women at the ropes of
carts laden with stone for a church, there is a close relation.
The cause and nature of the emotion which influences them are
the same. The difference of its mode of exhibition arises from
original differences of character, from changes in religious creeds,
from the varied circumstances of different ages. It is a difference
exhibited in the contrast between the bare boards of a Methodist
meeting-house and the carved walls of a Catholic cathedral.
THE DOME OF BRUNELLESCHI
From Historical Studies of Church Building in the Middle Ages. ' Copyright
1880, by Harper & Brothers. Reprinted by consent of Author and
Publishers.
IN
N THE chapter-house- the so-called Spanish chapel- of Santa
Maria Novella, is one of the most interesting pictures of the
fourteenth century. It has been ascribed, rightly or wrongly
is of little consequence, to the great Sienese master Simone
Memmi. It represents, in a varied and crowded composition of
many scenes, the services and the exaltation of St. Dominic and
his order. The artist may well have had in his mind the splen-
did eulogy of the saint which Dante heard from St. Bonaventura
in Paradise. As the type and image of the visible Church, the
painter had depicted the Duomo of Florence-not unfinished, as
it was at the time, but completed, and representing, we may
believe, in its general features, the original project of Arnolfo,
although the details are rather in the spirit of the delicate Gothic
work of Orcagna's school than in that of an earlier time.
central area of the church is covered by an octagonal dome that
rises from a cornice on a level with a roof of the nave, and is
adorned at each angle with the figure of an angel.
When the church now, at the beginning of the fifteenth
century, was approaching completion, this original project of
an octagonal dome still seemed the only plan practicable for the
covering of the intersection of nave and transept; but the con-
struction of such a work had been rendered vastly more difficult
by the immense increase in the original dimensions. The area to
be spanned was enormous, for the diameter of the octagon was
now about one hundred and thirty-five feet. The difficulty was
## p. 10717 (#597) ##########################################
CHARLES ELIOT NORTON
10717
the greater from the height of the walls from which the dome
must spring. No Gothic builder had vaulted such an area as
this. Since the Pantheon was built, no architect had attempted
a dome with such a span; and the dome of the Pantheon itself,
with a diameter of one hundred and forty-three feet, rose from
a wall that was but seventy-two feet in height. The dome of
St. Sophia, the supreme work of the Byzantine builders, with the
resources of the Empire at their command, had a diameter of
but one hundred and four feet, and the height from the ground
to its very summit was but one hundred and seventy-nine feet.
The records of architecture could not show such a dome as this
must be. Where was the architect to be found who would
venture to undertake its construction? What were the means he
could employ for its execution? Such were the questions that
pressed upon those who had the work in charge, and which
busied the thoughts of the builders of the time.
It cannot now be determined, and it is of little importance,
whether Brunelleschi's object in going to Rome was as distinctly
defined beforehand in his own mind as Vasari declares in the
statement that he had two most grand designs: one to bring to
light again good architecture; the other to find the means, if he
could, of vaulting the cupola of St. Mary of the Flower, "an
intention of which he said nothing to Donatello or any living.
soul; "or whether, as the anonymous biographer implies, this
object gradually took shape in his thought as he studied the
remains of Roman antiquity, acquainting himself with the forms
and proportions of classic buildings, and with the unsurpassed
methods of Roman construction. But this journey of Brunelles-
chi and Donatello, that they might learn, and learning revive, "the
good ancient art," is one of the capital incidents in the modern
Renaissance. These were the two men in all Florence, at the
beginning of the fifteenth century, of deepest nature, of most
various and original genius. They were in little sympathy with
the temper of the Middle Ages. For them the charm of its
finest moods was lost. The spirit that had given form to Gothic
art had always been foreign to Tuscan artists. The traditions of
an earlier time had never wholly failed to influence their work.
And now the worth and significance of ancient art, first recog-
nized by Niccola Pisano a century and a half earlier, were felt
as never before. The work of the scholars of the fourteenth
century, in the collection and study of the fragments of ancient
.
## p. 10718 (#598) ##########################################
10718
CHARLES ELIOT NORTON
culture, was bearing fruit. For a hundred years the progress in
letters and the arts in Italy had been quickened by the increas-
ing knowledge of the past; and with each step of advance men
had not only felt deeper and more inspiring delight in the ideals
of the classic world, but had found more and more instruction
in the models which its works presented. Through the creations
of the art of former days nature herself was revealed to them in
new aspects. Their reverence for the teachings of the ancients
was often uncritical and indiscriminate, but the zeal with which
they sought them was sincere and invigorating. It was not till
a later time, when the first eagerness of enthusiasm had given
place to a dry pedantry of investigation, that the study of classic
models allured a weaker generation from the paths of nature and
independence into those of artificiality and imitation.
Brunelleschi was the first artist to visit Rome with fully open
modern eyes.
From morning till night, day after day, he and
Donatello were at work unearthing half-buried ruins, measuring
columns and entablatures, digging up hidden fragments, search-
ing for whatever might reveal the secrets of ancient time. The
common people fancied them to be seekers for buried treasure;
but the treasure for which they sought was visible only to one
who had, like Brunelleschi, as his biographer says, "buono occhio
mentale," a clear mental eye.
For many years the greater part of Brunelleschi's life was
spent in Rome. He had sold a little farm that he owned at
Settignano, near Florence, to obtain the means of living; but
falling short of money after a while, he turned to the art in
which he had served his apprenticeship, and gained his livelihood
by work as a goldsmith. The condition of Rome at this time.
was wretched in the extreme. Nothing was left of the dignity
of the ancient city but its ruins. There was no settled civic
order, no regular administration of law or justice. Life and
property were insecure. The people were poor, suffering, and
turbulent. Rome was the least civilized city of Italy. Its aspect
was as wretched as its condition. Large tracts within its walls
were vacant. Its inhabited portions were a labyrinth of filthy
lanes. Many churches, built in earlier centuries, were neglected
and falling to ruin. There was no respect for the monuments
of former times. Many were buried under heaps of the foul-
est rubbish; many were used as quarries of stone for common
walls; many were cumbered by mean buildings, or occupied as
―
## p. 10719 (#599) ##########################################
CHARLES ELIOT NORTON
10719
strongholds. The portico of the Pantheon was filled with stalls
and booths; the arcades of the Colosseum were blocked up with
rude structures used for the most various purposes; the Forum
was crowded with a confused mass of low dwellings. Ancient
marbles, fragments of splendid sculpture, were often calcined for
lime. The reawakening interest in antiquity which was inspiring
the scholars and artists of Florence, and which was beginning
to modify profoundly the culture and the life of Europe, was
not yet shared by those who dwelt within the city which was its
chief source, and reverence for Rome was nowhere less felt than
in Rome itself.
But the example and the labors of Brunelleschi were opening
the way to change. He was the pioneer along a path leading
to modern times. In the midst of conditions that must have
weighed heavily upon him, he continued the diligent study of
the remains of ancient art, investigating especially such struct-
ures as the Pantheon and the Baths, for the purpose of learning
the methods adopted in their construction.
Meantime his repute was slowly advancing at home; and
when at intervals he visited Florence, he was consulted in re-
spect to the public and private buildings with which the flour-
ishing city was adorning herself. The work on the Duomo was
steadily proceeding. The eastern tribune was finished in 1407;
the others were approaching completion. The original plan of a
dome springing from the level of the roof of the nave had been
recognized as unfit for the larger church. Such a dome would
have had too heavy and too low a look. It had been decided
that the dome must be lifted above the level of the roof upon a
massive octagonal drum; and already in 1417 the occhi, or round
lights, of the drum were constructing, and the time was close at
hand when the structure would be ready for the beginning of
the dome itself. The overseers of the work were embarrassed
by the difficulty of the task by which they were confronted,
and knew not how to proceed. If a framework for the centring
of the dome were to be built up from the ground, they stood
aghast at the quantity of timber required for it, and at the enor-
mous cost; so that it seemed to them well-nigh an impossibility,
or to speak more truly, absolutely impossible.
«<
The Board of Works sought advice from Brunelleschi. But
if the master builders had seen difficulties, Philip showed them
far more. And some one asking, Is there, then, no mode of
## p. 10720 (#600) ##########################################
10720
CHARLES ELIOT NORTON
-
erecting it? Philip, who was ingenious also in discourse, replied
that if the thing were really impossible, it could not be done:
but that if it were not so, there ought to be some one in the
world who could do the work; and seeing that it was a religious
edifice, the Lord God, to whom nothing was impossible, would
surely not abandon it. " Further consultations were held; and on
May 19th, 1417, the Opera voted to give Philip di Ser Brunellesco
"pro bona gratuitate" — for his labors in making drawings and
employing himself concerning the cupola - ten golden florins.
No more characteristic or remarkable design was pro-
duced during the whole period of the Renaissance than this with
which its great architectural achievements began. It was the
manifesto of a revolution in architecture. It marks an epoch
in the art.
Such a dome as Brunelleschi proposed to erect had
never been built. The great domes of former times- the dome
of the Pantheon, the dome of Santa Sophia-had been designed
solely for their interior effect: they were not impressive or noble
structures from without. But Brunelleschi had conceived a dome
which, grand in its interior aspect, should be even more superb
from without than from within, and which in its stately dimen-
sions and proportions, in its magnificent lift above all the other
edifices of the city of which it formed the centre, should give
the fullest satisfaction to the desire common in the Italian cit-
ies for a monumental expression of the political unity and the
religious faith of their people. His work fulfilled the highest
aim of architecture as a civic art, in being a political symbol,
an image of the life of the State itself. As such no other of the
ultimate forms of architecture was so appropriate as the dome.
Its absolute unity and symmetry, the beautiful shape and pro-
portions of its broad divisions, the strong and simple energy
of its upwardly converging lines, all satisfied the sentiment of
Florence, compounded as it was of the most varied elements,-
civic, political, religious, and æsthetic.
At last, in 1420, all these masters from beyond the mountains
were assembled in Florence, together with those of Tuscany, and
all the ingenious architects of the city, among them Brunelleschi
himself. On a certain day they all met at the works of S. Maria
del Fiore, together with the consuls and the Board of Works
and a choice of the most intelligent citizens; and then one after
another spoke his mind as to the mode in which the dome might
be built. "It was a fine thing to hear the strange and diverse
## p. 10721 (#601) ##########################################
CHARLES ELIOT NORTON
10721
opinions on the matter. " Some advised to build up a structure
from the ground to support the cupola while it was in process of
building. Others, for the same end, proposed heaping up a high
mound of earth, in which pieces of money should be buried, so
that when the work was done the common people would carry
away the earth for the sake of what they might find in it. Others.
again urged that the cupola be built of pumice-stone, for the
sake of lightness. Only Philip said that the dome could be
built without any such support of timber or masonry or earth,
and was laughed at by all for such a wild and impracticable
notion; and growing hot in the explanation and defense of his
plan of construction, and being told to go but not consenting,
he was at last carried by main force from the assembly, "fu
portato di peso fuori," - all men holding him stark mad. And
Philip was accustomed to say afterwards that he was ashamed at
this time to go about Florence, for fear of hearing it said, "See
that fool there, who talks so wildly. " The overseers of the work
were distracted by the bewildering diversity of counsels; and
"Philip, who had spent so many years in studies for the sake
of having this work, knew not what to do, and was oftentimes
tempted to depart from Florence. Yet, wishing to win his
object, he armed himself with patience, as was needful, having
so much to endure; for he knew the brains of that city never
stood long fixed on one resolve. Philip might have shown a
little model which he had below, but he did not wish to show
it; being aware of the small understanding of the consuls, the
envy of the workmen, and the little stability of the citizens, who
favored now this, now that, according to their pleasure. What,
then, Philip had not been able to do in the assembly he began
to try with individuals; and speaking now to this consul, now to
this member of the Board of Works, and in like wise to many
citizens, showing them part of his design, he brought them to
determine to assign the work either to him or to one of the
foreigners. Whereby the consuls and the Board of Works and
the citizens being encouraged, they caused a new assembly to be
held, and the architects disputed of the matter; but they were
all beaten down and overcome by Philip with abundant reasons.
And here it is said that the dispute about the egg arose in this
manner. " The other architects urged him to explain his scheme
in detail, and to show them the model he had made of the
structure; but this he refused, and finally proposed to them that
XVIII-671
## p. 10722 (#602) ##########################################
CHARLES ELIOT NORTON
10722
the man who could prove his capacity by making an egg stand
on end on a smooth bit of marble should build the cupola. To
this they assented. All tried in vain; and then Philip, taking
the egg and striking it upon the marble, made it stand. The
others, offended, declared they could have done as much. "Ay,"
said Philip, "and so, after seeing my model, you could build the
cupola. "
It was accordingly resolved that he should have charge of the
conduct of the work; and he was directed to give fuller infor-
mation concerning his plans to the consuls and Board of Works.
Towards the end of the year 1425, in January (it is to be
remembered that the Florentine year began in March), Brunelles-
chi and Ghiberti, together with one of the Officials of the Cupola
and the head-master of the works, united in an important report
to the Board, as to the work in progress and that which was
to be next undertaken. It is plain from it that the difficulties
of building such a vault without centring were increasing as the
curve ascended. On the inner side of the vault a parapet of
planks was to be made, to protect the scaffolding and to cut off
the sight of the masters from the void beneath them, for their
greater security. "We say nothing of centring," say the builders:
"not that it might not have given greater strength and beauty
to the work," which may well be doubted; "but not having been
started with, a centring would now be undesirable, and could
hardly be made without armature, for the sake of avoiding which
the centring was dispensed with at the beginning. " Brunelles-
chi's genius was sufficient to overcome all the difficulties met
with in accomplishing the bold experiment which he had devised,
and which in its kind still remains without parallel.
Many entries in the records afford a lively impression of
scenes and incidents connected with the building. With all the
precautions that could be taken, the exposure of the workmen to
the risk of falling was great. Two men were thus killed in the
first year of the work. As the dome rose, the danger increased;
and a provision was made that any of the masters or laborers
who preferred to work below might do so, but at wages one
quarter less.
Brunelleschi, finding that owing to the vast height
of the edifice, the builders lost much time in going down for
food and drink, arranged a cook-shop and stalls for the sale of
bread and wine, in the cupola itself. Thenceforth no one was
## p. 10723 (#603) ##########################################
CHARLES ELIOT NORTON
10723
allowed to go down from his work oftener than once a day. But
the supply of wine in the cupola caused a new danger; and an
order was issued by the Board, that "considering the risks which
may daily threaten the master masons who are employed on the
wall of the cupola, on account of the wine that is necessarily
kept in the cupola, from this time forth the clerk of the works
shall not allow any wine to be brought up which has not been
diluted with at least one third of water. " But the workmen
were reckless; and amused themselves, among other ways, in let-
ting themselves and each other down on the outside of the dome
in mere sport, or to take young birds from their nests, till at
length the practice was forbidden by an order of the Board.
So year by year the work went on; the walls slowly rounding
upwards.
·
The work on the Duomo was now actively pushed forward.
The second chain to resist the thrust of the inner cupola was
constructed; and in 1432 the dome had reached such a height
that Brunelleschi was ordered to make a model of the closing of
its summit, and also a model of the lantern that was to stand on
it, in order that full consideration might be given to the work,
and due provision for it made in advance. Two years more
passed, years in which the city was busied with public affairs of
great concern both at home and abroad; when at length, on the
12th of June, 1434, just fourteen years from its beginning, the
cupola closed over the central space of the Duomo. It had
grown slowly, marvelous in the eyes of all beholders, who saw
its walls rise, curving over the void without apparent support,
held suspended in the air as if by miracle. Brunelleschi's fame
was secure; henceforth his work was chief part of Florence.
## p. 10724 (#604) ##########################################
10724
NOVALIS
(FRIEDRICH VON HARDENBERG)
(1772-1801)
RIEDRICH VON HARDENBERG, better known under the pseudonym
of Novalis, was born upon the family estate of Wiederstedt,
Mansfeld, Germany, May 2d, 1772. His early education and
environment were conducive to the development of the best that was
in him. His father, the Baron von Hardenberg, was in every respect
an exemplary man and a wise father; his mother was loving and
pious: and the family circle, which included
seven sons and four daughters, was bound
together by the closest ties of affection and
congeniality.
As a lad, Novalis was delicate and re-
tiring, and of a dreamy disposition. He
withdrew from the rough sports of his
companions, and amused himself by read-
ing and composing poetry. He wrote po-
etical plays, in which he and his brothers
enacted the characters of the spirits of
the earth and air and water. His parents
were Moravians; and the strict, religious
character of his training had a deep effect
upon his sensitive nature. His thoughts
dwelt constantly upon the unseen. His eyes burned with the light
of an inward fire, and he wandered about in a kind of day-dream, in
which the intangible was more real than his material surroundings.
A more healthful change took place during his ninth year. A severe
attack of illness seems to have aroused his dormant powers of resist-
ance; and after his recovery he was not only better physically, but
brighter and more cheerful, and far more awake to temporalities.
His education now began in earnest. He applied himself diligently
to his studies, and entered the University of Jena in 1789. Here he
met Fichte and Friedrich Schlegel; an acquaintance that was fruit-
ful of results, for with Novalis a friendship was an epoch, and his
ardent spirit readily yielded itself to affinitive influences. His pas-
sionate friendship for Schiller, whom he also met at Jena, and later
NOVALIS
## p. 10725 (#605) ##########################################
NOVALIS
10725
for Goethe, were molds for his plastic nature. He remained at
Jena until 1792, when he went to the University of Leipsic with his
brother Erasmus; and the following year he finished his studies at
Wittenberg.
The future character of his pursuits indicates his intention of fol-
lowing a business career. He went to Arnstadt, where, under the
instruction of Just, the principal judiciary of the district, he applied
himself to practical affairs. In 1795 he was appointed to a position.
in the Saxony salt works, of which his father was director. In the
mean time, early in the spring of 1795, he had made the acquaintance
of Sophie von Kuhn, a beautiful child of thirteen, for whom he at
once conceived a poetic passion. In spite of her youth, they were
betrothed; but Sophie died just after her fifteenth birthday, and
Novalis entered upon a period of darkness and despair that threat-
ened to engulf him. Shortly after her death, his brother Erasmus
died at Weissenfels; and this double grief seemed to transfigure No-
valis. For him the boundary line between the seen and the unseen
disappeared. He longed for death, and yet was in a state of exalta-
tion. He wrote to his brother Charles: "Be comforted. Erasmus has
conquered. The flowers of the beloved wreath here drop off one by
one, in order that there they may be reunited into one more beauti-
ful and eternal. "
It was during this time and a little later that he wrote some of
the most beautiful and spirituel of his compositions, notably Hymnen
an die Nacht' (Hymns to the Night). These fragmentary pieces of
prose are the breathings of a poet's soul. "I turn aside to the holy,
ineffable, mysterious Night. Afar lies the world submerged in the
deep vault of heaven. Waste and lonely is her place. The chords
of the bosom are stirred by deep sadness. I will descend in dew-
drops and mix myself with the ashes. Distances of memory, wishes
of youth, dreams of childhood, the short joys and vain hopes of a
whole long life, come in gray apparel, like the evening mist after the
sunset. In other spaces Light has pitched its joyful tents. Will it
never return to its children who await it with the faith of innocence ? »
With the intention of diverting his mind from his sorrow, his
parents persuaded him to carry out a plan of his younger days, and
undertake a course of study in the Mining School of Freiburg. Here,
amid congenial friends and in the interests of his pursuits, he grad-
ually recovered health and cheerfulness. He loved again, and shortly
became engaged to Julie, the daughter of the famous mineralogist
Charpentier. Novalis remained in Freiburg until the summer of
1799, when he returned to Weissenfels, where he was made assessor
and was appointed under his father chief judiciary of the Thurin-
gian district. He now visited often at Jena, where he established
## p. 10726 (#606) ##########################################
10726
NOVALIS
the warmest relations with Ritter, Schelling, Wilhelm Schlegel, and
Tieck; of whom the last, in connection with Friedrich Schlegel, be-
came his biographer and literary executor.
Always delicate, always spiritually toying with death, at last the
invincible forces that had so long held aloof descended upon him.
In August of the year 1800 he became very ill; and though he still
attended to the duties of his office, and wrote constantly, his weak-
ness increased, and on the 25th of March, 1801, he died at the house
of his parents in Weissenfels, not quite twenty-nine years of age.
The influence of Novalis was due more to the time of his ap-
pearance than to his power as a writer; and it is as a factor in the
evolution of German literature, rather than by the amount or even
the quality of his work, that he is to be judged. His entire writings
are comprised within two or three small volumes, and the years of
his literary activity were but six, included in the period between the
close of his student days and his death; and yet the name of Nova-
lis is the brightest of the old Romantic school. Although his early
death precluded the possibility of his fulfilling the expectations of his
friends, who regarded him as the torch-bearer in the struggle against
the materialism of the "Enlighteners," yet his union of religion and
poetry, his philosophy, and his deep faith in Christianity, made him
a power quite unique in the world of letters. 'Geistliche Lieder'
(Spiritual Songs) are matchless of their kind; and all his poems have
an illusive beauty and fragrance quite impossible to translate.
A great part of the works of Novalis are made up of miscellaneous
fragments, philosophical reflections, aphorisms, and irrelevant thoughts
set down in disconnected sentences. Many of these were published
in the Athenæum under the title of Blumenstaub' (Flower-Dust),
and many more were collected from his papers after the death of the
author. Die Lehrlinge zu Sais' (The Disciples at Sais) is a frag-
ment of an unfinished psychological romance, which in its vagueness
and philosophical speculation has many points of resemblance to his
later and also unfinished work, Heinrich von Ofterdingen. '
A new art, before its limitations have been reached, and before it
has definitely assumed its ultimate shape, may develop many extrav
agances. Novalis was a leader in the new school of Romanticism,
and 'Heinrich von Ofterdingen' was a protest against rationalism.
This allegorical romance, if indeed what is pure allegory may be
called a romance, was written during the last months of Novalis's
life. It was intended to be an apotheosis of poetry, and in this
phenomenal piece of literature there existed no law either human or
divine. The poet's fancy is all supreme. Dreams and allegories may
transcend all laws of mind and matter; nothing astonishes, nothing
is impossible. Heinrich von Ofterdingen in his search for the Blue
## p. 10727 (#607) ##########################################
NOVALIS
10727
Flower, the absolute ideal, represents the struggle of the spirit of
poesy against the environment of the material. Part first, 'Expecta-
tion,' which is completed, describes the gradual preparation of the
hero for the reception of this ethereal essence. Part second, The
Fulfillment,' has been completed in outline by Tieck, the author's
intimate friend and literary confidant, and is supposed to represent
the full blossoming of the poet's soul. "To the poet who compre-
hends the nature of his art to its centre, nothing appears contradict-
ory and strange. To him all riddles are solved. By the magic of the
imagination he can unite all ages and all worlds. Miracles disappear,
and everything transforms itself into miracles. " And so throughout
the tale the marvels advance by gigantic strides, until at the end it
only dimly stirs us to learn that "Heinrich plucks the Blue Flower
and releases Matilda from her enchantment, but she is again lost to
him. He becomes insensible through pain, and turns into a stone.
Edda (the Blue Flower, the Eastern Maiden, Matilda) sacrifices her-
self upon the stone, which is then transformed into a melodious tree.
Cyane hews down the tree and burns it, and herself with it. He
now becomes a golden ram which Edda - that is, Matilda-must sac-
rifice, when he again becomes man," etc.
'Heinrich von Ofterdingen' as a romance is unworthy of the place
assigned it by contemporary critics. Although full of passages of
rare beauties, and ideas which outstrip their time, it is nevertheless
vague, obscure, and chaotic. Its importance lies in its effect as the
leaven of the new literature just springing into being. It embodies
all the beauties, as well as all the faults and extravagances, of the old
Romantic school, before time had pruned its growth and developed it
into a fruitful maturity.
HYMNS TO THE NIGHT
WHAT
HAT living, feeling being loves not the gorgeous hues which
proclaim the dawn of day?
The ever-moving stars, as they whirl in boundless.
ether, hail the dawn-bright herald of the day, the glistening
rocks hail its rays, the tender growing plants raise their pure
eyes rejoicing, and the wild animal joins in the happy chorus.
which welcomes another day.
More than all these rejoices the glorious Being, the Monarch
of the Earth. His deep, thoughtful eyes survey his creation.
His melodious voice summons nature to resume her magic works.
He binds or looses a million ties, and stamps all earthly life with
## p. 10728 (#608) ##########################################
10728
NOVALIS
some impress of his power. His presence reveals the marvels
of the Kingdom of Earth.
But sacred Night, with her unspoken mysteries, draws me to
her. The world is far, far away, buried in a deep and lonely
grave. My heart is full of sadness. Let me dissolve in drops
of dew, and join the beloved dust. Long past memories, youth-
ful ambitions, childhood's dreams, a long life of brief joys and
blighted hopes, pass before me-dusky forms, like evening mist.
In another region merry day returns triumphant. Will it
never return to us, its children, who await its coming in child-
like trust?
What stirs this weary heart, and banishes my sorrow? Dost
thou feel pity for us, O holy Night?
What soothing influence pervades my being? What hand
sheds costly opiate on my throbbing heart? The wings of fancy
no longer droop, fresh energy arises within me. In joyful sur-
prise I see a calm, grave face bend lovingly over me; the face
of a tender mother, beaming with eternal youth. How poor and
childish in comparison are the joys of day, how blessed and con-
soling the return of night!
The active work of day is over; the boundless ocean of space,
with its lustrous spheres, proclaims Night's eternal power and
presence.
The eyes of the Night are countless hosts of glittering orbs,
a glory far exceeding that of Day. They see far beyond the
most distant of those countless hosts; they need no light to
perceive the unfathomable depth of that loving Spirit who fills
boundless space with happiness.
All hail, Queen of the Earth! thou herald of holier worlds,
thou revealer of holy love! Much-loved sun of the night, thou
art her gift.
My whole being awakes. I am thine, and thou art mine.
Night has aroused me to life and manhood. Consume my earthly
frame, draw me into deeper and closer union, and may our
bridal night endure for ever.
MUST Day return again? Will earthly influences never cease?
Unholy toil desecrates the heavenly calm of Night. When shall
the mystic sacrifice of love burn for ever? Light has its own
fixed limits, but Night has a boundless unfathomable dominion;
the reign of Sleep has no end. Holy Sleep! shed thy blest balm
## p. 10729 (#609) ##########################################
NOVALIS
10729
on the hallowed Night of this earthly sphere. Only fools fail
to understand thee, and know of no other sleep than the shades
which the actual night casts over us in kindly pity. They see
thee not in the purple blood of the grape, in the golden oil of
the almond, in the dusty sap of the poppy. They guess not that
it is thou who hoverest around the tender maiden, making her
heart the temple of Heaven; nor dream that it is thou, heavenly
messenger, who bearest the key which opens the dwellings of the
Blessed.
I KNOW when the last day shall come when Light no longer
shall be scared by Night and Love: then slumber shall not cease,
and existence shall become an endless dream. Heavenly weari-
ness oppresses me, long and dreamy was my pilgrimage to the
Holy Grave, crushing was the cross I bore. He who has drunk
of the crystal wave which wells forth from the gloomy grave
on which earth's billows break, he who has stood on earth's
border-land and perceived that new country, the dwelling of
Night, returns not to the tumult of life, to the land where light
reigns amid ceaseless unrest.
―――
He builds himself a refuge far from the tumult-a peaceful
home, and awaits the welcome hour when he too shall be drawn
into the crystal wave. All that savors of earth floats on the
surface, and is driven back by tempests; but what love has hal-
lowed flows in hidden channels, to another region where it min-
gles- a fragrant essence—with those loved ones who have fallen
asleep.
Ah! merry Light, thou still arousest the weary to their task,
and strivest to inspire me too with cheerful life; but thou hast
no charm to tempt me from my cherished memories. With
joy I watch the busy hands, and look around to fulfill my own
duty; I praise thy glorious works, admire the matchless blending
of thy cunning designs, watch the varied workings of the busy
hours, and seek to discover the symmetry and laws which rule
the marvels of endless space and measureless ages.
But my heart remains ever true to Night and her daughter,
creative Love. Canst thou show me one ever-faithful heart?
Has thy sun a friendly glance for me? Do thy stars hold out a
welcoming hand? Do they return the gentle pressure and the
caressing word? Hast thou clothed them in color and beauty?
What joys or pleasure can life offer to outweigh the charm of
## p. 10730 (#610) ##########################################
NOVALIS
10730
death? Does not all that inspires us bear the colors of Night?
Night bears thee gently like a mother; to her thou owest all thy
glory. Thou wouldst have sunk into endless space had not Night
upheld thee, and bound thee, till earth arose. Truly I existed
long ere thou wert: I and my sisters were sent to dwell in thy
world, and hallow it with love, to make it an enduring memorial;
to plant it with unfading flowers. Not yet have these blossoms
opened, few are the traces which mark our way. But the end
of time is at hand; then thou wilt rejoin us, and gently fade
away, full of longing and fervent desire. All thy busy restless-
ness will end in heavenly freedom, a blessed home-coming. With
bitter grief I acknowledge thy forsaking of our home, thine un-
conquered hatred to the old glorious heaven.
But in vain is thy wrath and fury. The Cross stands firm
for ever, the banner of our race.
souls.
THE many scattered races of mankind lay bound for ages in
the grasp of an iron fate.
