had in some way become Christianized after the Arian mode, and it was then that they descended on Italy through the passes at the head of the Adriatic. By this time the brief dominion of the Goths had been abolished and the Lombards succeeded to their power in the ravaged and desolate country of the north, but they were always barbarians in spite of their almost violent devotion, and to the Latin element at Rome under the Pope, and the Greek at Ravenna, they were an alien band of tyrants and invaders. During the two centuries of their rule they intermarried much with the Italian population and their Teutonic language was lost, as well as much of their primitive social and political organization. The Greeks at Ravenna were too decadent to move against them, and at last the Pope appealed to Pippin to whom he had given the Frank crown in succession to the degenerate Merovings and he struck the first blow, which, followed by those of Charlemagne, brought the Lombard dominion to an end in the year 774.

Now the Lombard cities - Pavia, Milan, Monza, etc.— had achieved considerable independence under their dukes, and this liberty was greatly increased under the bishops who took their place when the Frankish kingdom was established. In due course they won their independence of the bishops and became free communes, walled towns of order and industry in a wilderness of turbulence and disorder. It was here that the new style of building showed itself in the ninth century. It was not much at first, just crude assembling of old material, as at Agliate, but from the very beginnings of the eleventh century a new quality shows itself, as in Sant' Eustorgio in Milan. There is some spirit of the North working, shaking the dry bones of a long dead pagan art, and in hardly more than fifty years we see the development of the earliest stages of some of the fundamental structural principles which, transferred to Normandy and France, were to be transmuted into Gothic. The round or square piers of Roman architecture became compound, i.e., made up of an

increasing number of parts square and semicircular in section: the "alternating system," which means in the nave structure a system of square areas supported on rectangular piers, each subdivided by an intermediate column, was worked out; the concentration of loads on piers and shafts was begun, together with local buttresses to take the concentrated arch thrusts, and finally it now seems probable that the pointed and domical vault was achieved after a rough fashion, and even, though this is not quite sure, the ribbed vault was devised.

IV. THE STRUCTURAL DEVELOPMENT

Gothic, or the Christian architecture of northern Europe, north of the Alps and west of the Rhine, is both a system of construction and a new vision of beauty: that is, it is both body and spirit. It is necessary to guard against the dangerous teaching of those who would make either alone sufficient, without regard to the other. The structural scheme is the most complex and highly developed of all schools of building, but the spiritual quality is of equal moment. The first was worked out to perfection in France while it is very defective in England, but the second is sometimes more poignant in English work, and Spanish, than it is in French. All are equally "Gothic," for the spirit is the same.

There is no more fascinating study than the development of the Gothic structural scheme for this is truly one of the greatest triumphs of man. Charles H. Moore is an excellent guide in this field, Henry Adams, W. Worringer, John Ruskin and Émile Mâle in the domain of the spiritual content of a great art. To indicate the beginnings of this structural development I quote from my "Substance of Gothic."

"This development of the original basilican plan and organism until it finally culminated at the hands of other races and far in the north, was somewhat as follows:

"The supply of ancient marble columns being exhausted,

circular or square piers built up of small stones were substituted. At about the same time arches were thrown across the aisles from each pier to the outer wall, possibly for aesthetic reasons, more probably for purposes of stability. In any case they involved the addition of a pilaster to the pier to take the arch on its inner side, and so the first step toward the compound pier was accomplished. Next, great and high arches were flung across the nave, partly for stability, partly because of their beauty. These arches were either on every third pier, as at San Miniato, or on every alternate pier. In either case an additional pilaster was built on the pier that bore the nave arch, so making it cruciform, while the intermediate support, having less work to do, was made smaller. Thus the alternating system of the late Norman and early Gothic was begun, while the scaffolding had been prepared for the next innovation, which was masonry vaulting. This began first in the small areas of the side aisles, and was plainly groined, without ribs. Almost immediately the structural convenience of ribs was either rediscovered or remembered from the Baths of Diocletian, or copied from Syria, and after this the whole scheme of Gothic construction was inevitable. The ribs made elaborate centering no longer necessary, since they were built first and then the spaces simply filled with thin stones from the haunch upward. This simplification made the high vault possible, and this at first was quadripartite, or just the space of two of the aisle arches. Which was the first ribbed and pointed nave vault is a question that is archaeological rather than architectural. That it was not earlier than 1025 or later than 1075 we are reasonably sure. The vault of Sant' Ambrogio is of the year 1060 and so perfect it is surely not the first. Venturi, Stiehl, Lethaby believe this ribbed, pointed and domed vault to be a Norman invention, and others claim that Durham in England is the first. It does not really matter, the feat had been accomplished, and that is really all we need to know.

"Already we have a definite concentration of loads on cer

tain points, and aesthetic recognition of this new principle. This involved a new scheme of buttressing, for while the thick Roman walls of the aisles had served to take the thrust of the transverse aisle arches, the nave arches, particularly when stone vaults were added, were a different matter. Naturally the first step was to build transverse walls across the aisles, piercing these with arched openings, as at Sant' Ambrogio. This is as far as the Lombards went; the flying buttress was the final structural refinement of the Normans and the Franks."

Simultaneously a new thing was showing itself in the ornament of these buildings. Roman decoration had ended as it began in a mass of lifeless, standardized forms; Byzantine decoration, under Greek and Oriental influence, had become a thing of singular vivacity and sumptuous beauty, but this also was hardening into formalism. The Lombards took over what they could get of the latter, through Venice and Ravenna, but they put into it a new force inherited from their ancestors of the wild North. The awe of the dark forests and fierce seas was still on them, and strange apocryphal beasts, fantastic herbage, impossible flowers, all knotted and convoluted in runic designs, became the substance of their decorative sculpture. There is something of terror and much of grotesque in their work, but above all a brilliant decorative sense and a quality of wild freedom that, curbed at last by sound law, became the noble liberty of Gothic art.

The beginnings are elsewhere than in north Italy, and we must cross France to the shores of the English Channel to take up this story. Here in Normandy the fierce Vikings had found a home and, at the hands of the monks of Cluny, a religion. They were ready to go on and give this its architectural and other artistic form, but they had nothing to work on until the material was brought them from the South.

This came, and the agent was a certain William of Volpiano who was born in the year 961 on a little island in Lake Orta in Italy, very likely himself of Lombard blood, as his Christian name would indicate. He became a monk of Cluny and when very young was sent north to become abbot at Dijon where he built the great monastic church of Saint-Bénigne. A little later, so great was his fame as a leader and reformer, Duke Richard II of Normandy called him to Fécamp as abbot of the great monastery in that place.

William was the greatest builder of the new age, but thanks to the French Revolution most of his work has either been destroyed or hopelessly ruined. The great abbey at Dijon has utterly disappeared. Bernay is wrecked and desecrated and the same is true of Jumièges. He had many disciples who built the original church at Mont-SaintMichel, also Cerisy-La-Foret and Saint-Georges-de-Boscherville. Finally Lanfranc, also born in Pavia and of Lombard blood, became a monk of Bec (another of the three greatest Norman abbeys) only nine years after the death of Abbot William, and at his hands the new style initiated by Abbot William reached its culmination. Again I will quote from "The Substance of Gothic."

"The loss of Saint-Bénigne is irreparable; it marked the first advent in the north of the Lombard principles; it formed the point of contact between Italy and France, and, judging from its foundations, which are all the revolutionists have left us, and from the most defective drawings, it was an unique stage in the development of the Gothic chevet. It was a T-cross basilica, with apse and flanking absidioles; a great circular church or rotunda adjoined it to the east, and by two rings of columns was divided into a central well with two vaulted galleries, while again to the east was a quadrangular chapel forming the tomb of the saint. The importance of this building cannot be overestimated, for in the year 1002, it amazingly foreshadows the fully developed cathedral of the thirteenth century. Undoubtedly its resemblance to