I. The Romanesque System of Architecture

Widely spread all over Christian Europe, the Romanesque style was the first independent, self-contained and unified style. Architecture dominated Romanesque art, and all other artistic movements such as painting and sculpture, which often demonstrated dramatic motifs, were subordinated. The Romanesque style is predominantly a certain use of forms, which branches out into different peculiarities. Nonetheless, most Romanesque structures have certain essential features in common, according to which a system of Romanesque architecture can be established.

Romanesque architecture can be divided into the Early, High and Late Romanesque periods, whereby the Pre- and Early Romanesque periods can also be subdivided according to dynasties; Merovingian (up to 750 A.D.), Carolingian (750-920 A.D.) under Charlemagne’s rule, and Ottonian (920-1024 A.D.). In the different European countries, different starting dates are used to mark the beginning of the Romanesque period. Thus, the Anglo-Saxon period in England ends in 1066 with the Battle of Hastings. In Germany, the Romanesque period begins with the end of the Ottonian dynasty (1024), and in France the first vaulted buildings (Saint-Michel-de-Cuxa in the Pyrenees and Saint-Philibert in Tournus) appeared.

The only structures that can initially be considered, however, are exclusively ecclesiastical buildings, since the Early Romanesque style everywhere in Europe was developed mainly by young monastic communities, as was intellectual and spiritual life in general. They are thus, in their majority, ecclesiastical art. The more the riches of the church grew, the more magnificent the structures became. The ecclesiastical building’s basic form is the basilica with its often cross-shaped floor plan, whereby the choir and nave are located in the long arm, while the transept forms the short arm of the cross. The so-called overstorey or clerestorey windows are located in the nave above the side aisle roof.

The westwork was considered a symbol of secular power. Thus, it was where the Emperor was seated during mass. The choir represented ecclesiastical power. Secular buildings – castles, fortresses, princely palaces, Pfalzen (secondary seats of power) and urban residences – are only preserved from the end of the Romanesque period and only in very scarce numbers. The massive, well-fortified and fortress-like walls (particularly in the westwork), the round arches on windows and doors, the small windows, and, though only in the later periods, the cushion-cap capitals on top of often delicate columns are typical of Romanesque architecture. The most important achievement of Romanesque architecture is, without doubt, the vault.

The Early Romanesque period (from around 1024 until 1080) is characterised by flat, wooden coffered ceilings, which were in constant danger of fire. The walls made of smooth stone blocks were unadorned and more like those of a fortress than an ecclesiastical building. The first towers were attached to buildings often even their multiples. During the High Romanesque period (from around 1080 to 1190) groin vaults appeared as well as architectural ornamentation and free-standing figurative sculptures. The subsequent Late Romanesque period, which ended around 1235, preferred the variety of lavishly decorated structures and interiors. During the Late Romanesque period one can already find Gothic elements, such as pointed arches or ribbed vaults; the massive walls and small windows, however, remained. During this time, magnificent twin tower façades also appeared, as well as richly-formed crossing towers. The church of the Romanesque Middle Ages did not develop from the Carolingian central structures, but from the monastic churches, which had quickly become places of worship for the masses through the monks’ culture of pastoral activities of encouragement and conversion.

The basilica form was also the foundation of the new system, but was often expanded and enriched by new forms. The old main elements – choir, nave and transept – were retained. The choir, however, was regularly enlarged by the insertion between the transept and the choir of a rectangular room, whose size corresponded largely to that of a square created by the intersection of the nave and transept, the crossing. In this manner, for example, a floor plan in the shape of the Latin cross, developed for the monastic plan of St. Gall, appeared, which replaced the T-shaped floor plan and remained authoritative throughout the Middle Ages. The enlarged choir, whose expansion had become necessary due to the constant growth of the clergy and was thus marked as a preferred place for them, was separated from the crossing by several steps. This raising of the choir above floor level was also done for another reason. The Romanesque period had adopted the idea of the crypt from the Carolingian basilica, and it is present in all but a few churches of the Early Romanesque period.

Crypts were originally used to hold martyr relics, over top of whose resting places stone sarcophagi were erected. Later on, noblemen and other high-ranking individuals, such as founders and benefactors of churches, were also buried in crypts. Thus, for example, King Henry I of Saxony and his wife Mathilda have their final resting place in the crypt of the Stiftskirche (collegiate church) of Quedlinburg, which they had founded, in present-day Saxony-Anhalt. This crypt, which was later renovated, is one of Germany’s two oldest crypts, the other being St. Wiperti Church in Quedlinburg, which was also founded by Henry I and remained preserved in its original form. This quaint little town with a current population of nearly 25,000 used to be the capital of Germany at the time for more than 200 years, and is now part of UNESCO’s World Cultural Heritage.

Relatively close in age is the crypt of the Stiftskirche (collegiate church) of Gernrode in the Harz region, built from 961, which retained its overall original character in all other parts also. From this structure, one can appreciate to what degree the spatial effect of the interior as well the monumentality of the exterior appearance of Romanesque architecture had already blossomed on German soil in the tenth century.

During the early period of the Romanesque style, church interiors were less ornate than their exteriors. Thus, for example, the exterior façade of the church of Gernrode, the most imposing building in Saxony at the time, is only made up of pilasters bearing round arches. These round arches with their painted ornaments or diverse stone inlays did not only serve a decorative purpose, but they also contributed to the building’s structural stability. Two round towers with cone-shaped roofs frame the high-rising western façade, which is attached in its current form to an apse dating from the twelfth century. Initially, these towers were only used for the practical purpose of housing the bells and the stairs leading up to the bell cage, but they soon achieved artistic importance in church architecture. The master builder of the church in Gernrode was obviously very keen to connect the towers not only with the entire structure into a unified whole, but also to animate the massive walls with unique ornamentation. The towers are divided into tiers, where each one is different from the next in its structure. In doing this, one did not even pay particular attention to symmetry, since the second tier of one tower shows pointed arches in its arcades, and that of the other round arches. In contrast to the open arched windows of the upper tower tiers, through which the ringing of the bells was to echo through the lands, these closed arches are called “blind arcades”.

The two towers framing the western façade were main elements of church architecture during the prime of the Romanesque style. In the course of the Gothic period, they developed into splendid specimens throughout ecclesiastical architecture, behind which the rest of the structure was sometimes even neglected. The western towers, however, did not remain alone even during the Romanesque period. Among the master builders a demand circulated, based on their early aesthetic considerations, to interrupt certain parts of the church roof, which usually appeared monotonous with its steeply rising gable forms, with tower-like structures and to thus denote these parts as extraordinarily pleasant and important. One location emerged as particularly suitable; the intersection of the nave and transept roofs above the crossing. In the older days, only a small tower lodged on the roof ridge, the so-called ridge turret, was installed, which was also still used later when lacking funds prevented the erection of a massive tower of imposing size.

In the Romanesque style’s further development, the slender, delicate ridge turret turned into a short rectangular or octagonal tower, which was frequently topped off with a pyramid-shaped spire or simply closed off with a gable roof. As the master builders became more aware of how much the churches’ artistic effect could be increased by the addition of towers, the more daring they became, whenever the means permitted it. The towers’ original practical purpose was completely forgotten. The aesthetic function was chiefly considered; the heightening of the overall picturesque impression and the joy that was granted to the town’s residents in particular by the wide views into the land. At the same time, however, the tall tower gave guards the opportunity to give early warning to the town about approaching enemies or predatory hordes. In addition to the set of towers framing the western façade and the crossing tower, further towers were added on both sides of the transept or the choir. In the prime of the Romanesque style in Germany, which is represented by the Cathedral in Limburg an der Lahn for example, even that number was found to be insatisfactory, and the transept gables were framed with two towers each, bringing the total number of towers to seven.

Neither did the ornamentation of the walls fall behind this increase in the richness of the exterior structure. The structuring of the walls by projection and pilasters was expanded with round arch friezes; a sequence of small, semicircular arches, which initially only ran underneath the roof cornice, but later underneath all the cornices, in particular also those which separated the towers’ individual tiers. During the later periods of the Romanesque style, decorative ornamentation was added on the exterior. It was, however, limited to initially simple portals, which then developed increasingly into magnificent examples of Romanesque sculpture. With the meaningful subject matter in their reliefs, they were intended to augment the churchgoers’ reverent mood prior to entering the place of worship. The lateral walls of the portals, which were closed off with a rounded arch, were staggered or stepped off toward the interior and fitted with small columns and figures. The meaning behind these was connected with the relief image, which mostly decorated the arch area above the horizontal lintel; the tympanum. Gradually, this visual décor expanded into continuous stories from the Old and New Testaments. Certain doctrines and moral teachings, which could not be conveyed to the largely analphabet masses by the preachers’ verbal attempts, became more commonly known and understood by viewing the readily accessible picture sequences on the portals. This pictorial language quickly became popular and was of great importance for the dissemination and reinforcement of religious ideas before the invention of the printing press. It was later continued during the Gothic period and used in richer forms of expression. Romanesque art, thus, had a definite didactic purpose.

The twin-choir churches, which have been used to describe the main elements of the Early Romanesque style, are really only characteristic of Saxony. In other German regions, churches show a simpler floor plan and usually only have one choir. This type of church is also often found in Saxony, but is so considerably different in detail that no uniform type with common characteristics can be established. There is no standard church that unifies all the characteristic peculiarities of the Romanesque style. All the churches of the Late Romanesque style have only the vaulted ceiling in common, which from the eleventh century replaced the flat wood-beam ceiling in Germany, and was formed into a generally observed system. Originally only used for narrow aisles, they also encompassed the wide central nave once the builders had learned to master the construction challenges. The heavy stone vault was immense in weight, which is why the walls had to be so massive in order to withstand the enormous pressure. For the same reason, there are few windows and doors in Romanesque buildings. The arched windows are explained by the necessity to spread the enormous pressure of the weight onto posts and columns, in order to ensure the building’s stability.

Wherever Christianity spread, the monks were the first builders. It was only through years of experience that they learned how to master the building materials of their regions. Then, they became teachers to their lay brethren, from whom grew the bourgeois builders’ guild. The building-savvy monks had already come to know the art of vaulting in the countries of Roman culture, to which they had come from the North. But only after intense practice were they able to also apply this knowledge to the new task of ecclesiastical architecture. They started by building vaults on smaller aisles, where they initially used the simplest form, the barrel vault, and only later the groin vault. In the wide central nave they had to make do with a wooden ceiling for a considerably longer period of time, until the master builders succeeded in constructing arches that could span such great distances. As indicated above, as the first vault forms existing in Roman buildings, the groin vault presumably resulted from the intersection of two barrel vaults. Thus, four dome caps were created, whose separating lines formed distinct “groins”. Those caps, which held each other, needed only be supported on the four end points.

The weight was so enormous that slender columns could not longer be used, but sturdy pillars had to be employed to support it. Every nave was covered with several of these vault bays based on a square floor plan, which were separated by wide transverse arches between the pillars. The central nave usually comprised three to six of these squares, the normally half-width aisles had double the number of squares, whose size, however, was only one quarter of a central nave square. Only when the builders mastered the art of spanning a groin vault over a rectangle could the bays in the aisles correspond in length to those of the central nave. Only thus did the floor plan of the Romanesque church achieve complete harmony. This varying division of the bays is illustrated by a comparison of the floor plan of the Cathedral of Speyer, which in its strict structure represents the so-called “unified Romanesque system”, with that of the Abteikirche (abbey church) of Maria Laach. At the Cathedral of Speyer, the normally square bays of the central nave are also rectangular.

In both of the churches a vestibule known as “paradise” in the Middle Ages is preserved, which was supposedly used by penitents as a reminder of the atrium in a Christian basilica. This is most clearly illustrated by the church in Maria Laach, a twin-choir structure, to which the vestibule was only added at the beginning of the thirteenth century – this is how long the early Christian building customs remained alive. Even though the choir layout of these churches, which were finished at the same time around the turn of the twelfth century, is relatively simple, other churches of the same period display richly formed choirs. By leading the aisles around the choir an ambulatory was gained, usually half the height of the choir, which served to grant the streams of pilgrims access to the holy relics kept in the choir. It was later enlarged by the addition of small apses for the installation of secondary altars. Only the Gothic style brought this expansion of the choir to its conclusion by forming the apses into small chapels and eventually surrounding the choir with a ring of chapels. It was also the Gothic style which enabled the rood screen (in Latin, lectorium), a wooden or stone barrier, to achieve its artistic magnificence. It developed from the barriers (cancelli) which already separated the choir from the central nave in early Christian basilicas and was equipped with two or more passageways. In the centre, a chancel-like structure with a lectern, accessible by a set of stairs, rose and served for the reading of spiritual texts from the gospel.

The creation of individual forms and ornaments was as varied as the layout of the floor plans, where arches, pillars and columns in particular could be considered. It was already indicated that alongside the capital, whose Antique ornamentation had been imitated with more or less understanding, a separate Romanesque capital form developed in the form of the cushion-cap capital, whose smoothly carved, semi-circular surfaces where probably painted. Later, they were covered with relief ornamentation of foliage and twisted bands, which gradually obscured the square column top, rendering the original form underneath completely unrecognisable. Fable motifs, human and animal figures, demons and saints, in natural but also frequently fantastic forms were woven into the ornamentation.

The stonemasons, particularly of the later Romanesque period, sought to outdo each other by inventing ever more fantastic designs, in which the comical and terrible combined into a grotesque effect, particularly as the influences conveyed by the Crusades asserted themselves. The basic form of the cushion-cap capital can hardly be recognised in those figurative capitals. Echoes of basic Antique forms presumably still exist in the cup and bud shapes of the capital, but the ornamentation was new at the time, and its independence can again be found most clearly in the monuments in Germany.

The column base was usually shaped after the Attic example; a hollow moulding located on top of a rectangular plinth between two tori. The fact that the lower torus was resting directly on the plinth did not sit well with the artist builders for long. Initially, they trimmed the four corners with round blocks, later with tuber-shaped leaves, which only then brought about the actual transition between round and squared. The initially smooth column shafts were later covered with sculpted ornamentation; interlacings reminiscent of twisted bands, zigzag patterns and more.

The original basic square pillars, which were only attached to a simple cover plate on the top and a wooden hollow moulding, soon took on richer forms. The edges were bevelled or moulded and the resulting corners were filled with small, slim columns, a technique that made the pillar appear more vivid and which could already be found in Muslim buildings such as those in Cairo. Later, the four pillar surfaces – or possibly only two of them – had engaged columns attached to them, mostly with their own capitals, which had their own function; they carried the vault’s transverse arches. Finally, the pillar tops also received sculpted adornment corresponding to the richness of the rest of the ornamentation. Thus, the formation of the Romanesque style was in the process of a soaring development on both the construction and ornamentation sides, until it was gradually replaced by the use of form of the Gothic period.