1 00:00:00,370 --> 00:00:06,410 Hello! This video covers Romanesque Europe, so Europe around the year 1100 or so, 2 00:00:06,410 --> 00:00:11,369 plus or minus. Romanesque just means Roman-like, but be careful. Don't use the 3 00:00:11,369 --> 00:00:15,130 term Romanesque just to describe anything that looks ancient Roman. This is a very 4 00:00:15,130 --> 00:00:19,289 specific period in the later part of the Middle Ages, just before the Gothic 5 00:00:19,289 --> 00:00:23,710 period starts really taking hold, so just be sure that you when you're using the 6 00:00:23,710 --> 00:00:28,390 term Romanesque, you're only using it to describe this period. Really don't use it 7 00:00:28,390 --> 00:00:33,969 to describe something that looks ancient Roman in general. So it does mean 8 00:00:33,969 --> 00:00:37,689 Roman-like in this case, but that means that they're using some of the 9 00:00:37,689 --> 00:00:41,590 type of architectural features of ancient Rome. Things like the pure 10 00:00:41,590 --> 00:00:46,869 semicircular arch, a lot of masonry, or a lot of stonework. So here I have an image 11 00:00:46,869 --> 00:00:49,750 of a Roman aqueduct just giving you an idea of those kind of archways that 12 00:00:49,750 --> 00:00:56,170 we're gonna see in the Romanesque style of architecture. We also see a clear 13 00:00:56,170 --> 00:00:59,929 focus on relics and reliquaries, which had been important in Christianity, but 14 00:00:59,929 --> 00:01:04,810 really gained a higher level of importance during this period. We'll talk 15 00:01:04,810 --> 00:01:10,709 about the Crusades a little bit, which were an important reason for warfare, for 16 00:01:10,709 --> 00:01:15,670 interaction, for trade around this time. You have an apocalyptic mood going on, so 17 00:01:15,670 --> 00:01:18,790 remember around the year 1000, everyone was very nervous about the end of the 18 00:01:18,790 --> 00:01:23,230 world? Well, that kind of mood will continue to survive and stay around for 19 00:01:23,230 --> 00:01:28,030 a while. The Roman Nostyle spreads from France and Spain over to Germany and 20 00:01:28,030 --> 00:01:34,030 Italy, so we'll see some examples in all of those countries in this lecture. So, 21 00:01:34,030 --> 00:01:37,750 starting off, I just want to show an example of a reliquary. This reliquary 22 00:01:37,750 --> 00:01:41,629 comes from France, from Conques, which was an important pilgrimage church. This 23 00:01:41,629 --> 00:01:47,209 represents St. Foy, and it includes kind of an amalgam of different materials. So, 24 00:01:47,209 --> 00:01:52,549 it includes an ancient Roman helmet and cameos. It includes beautiful stones, 25 00:01:52,549 --> 00:01:56,510 precious stones, semi-precious stones, similar to the Lindau Gospel covers that 26 00:01:56,510 --> 00:02:02,250 we saw in the early medieval lecture. Very ornamented work that celebrates an 27 00:02:02,250 --> 00:02:07,650 early Christian martyr, and it's said to hold her relics, hold these relics of 28 00:02:07,650 --> 00:02:11,969 this important martyr. So this was how these relics and reliquaries worked. So 29 00:02:11,969 --> 00:02:17,330 the relic is the actual body part inside, or the object that this holy figure was 30 00:02:17,330 --> 00:02:21,509 said to have touched, or a garment that maybe they wore. So the relic is actually 31 00:02:21,509 --> 00:02:25,150 inside, the reliquary is the case that it would go in. So here we're seeing the 32 00:02:25,150 --> 00:02:30,349 reliquary, and the relic is presumably inside. So the idea is that you make it 33 00:02:30,349 --> 00:02:34,669 as beautiful as possible to speak highly of these relics, which are real 34 00:02:34,669 --> 00:02:39,569 generators of income and of interest in different churches. So if you had a 35 00:02:39,569 --> 00:02:43,050 really important relic and reliquary, that meant that you were going to get 36 00:02:43,050 --> 00:02:46,710 more visitors, more pilgrims coming to your church, and Conk was an important 37 00:02:46,710 --> 00:02:50,229 pilgrimage church, so you would have visitors making their 38 00:02:50,229 --> 00:02:53,909 pilgrimages and making sure that they stopped in this church to see some of 39 00:02:53,909 --> 00:02:57,849 the important relics and reliquaries there. This is an example of what we call 40 00:02:57,849 --> 00:03:06,229 furta sacra or holy theft, this idea that you can steal a relic and reliquary from 41 00:03:06,229 --> 00:03:12,229 another monastery. So these relics were said to have been translated to one spot 42 00:03:12,229 --> 00:03:17,490 or said to have arrived at a site, and then they were stolen by a monk to bring 43 00:03:17,490 --> 00:03:21,509 them to conch. So what would happen is you'd often have a monk who would kind 44 00:03:21,509 --> 00:03:26,909 of end up in a monastery. He would wait a while, wait till he could get 45 00:03:26,909 --> 00:03:31,009 access to a relic, and then bring it back to his home abbey, or bring it back to 46 00:03:31,009 --> 00:03:35,530 his home monastery. So there was definitely a system of taking these 47 00:03:35,530 --> 00:03:40,129 relics from one place to another for spiritual reasons, community reasons, 48 00:03:40,129 --> 00:03:44,930 possibly monetary reasons, too, in order to generate income for one's church. So 49 00:03:44,930 --> 00:03:50,449 this is an example of that kind of theft. People also saw problems with this kind 50 00:03:50,449 --> 00:03:55,430 of visual richness of the gold and the materials, the stones that were used, that 51 00:03:55,430 --> 00:03:59,509 this could be problematic. And there was a Cistercian monk who's quite austere, 52 00:03:59,509 --> 00:04:04,370 Abbot of Clairvaux. His name is Bernard of Clairvaux. He was very unhappy with 53 00:04:04,370 --> 00:04:07,490 some of the worship of relics and reliquaries that eyes were fixed on 54 00:04:07,490 --> 00:04:11,310 relics covered with gold. The thoroughly beautiful image of some male or female 55 00:04:11,310 --> 00:04:15,069 female saint is exhibited, and that saint is believed to be the more 56 00:04:15,069 --> 00:04:20,009 holy, the more highly colored the image is. So, this worry about idolatry, about 57 00:04:20,009 --> 00:04:25,769 possibly worshiping these images as if they are gods, or just the fact that they 58 00:04:25,769 --> 00:04:29,730 look beautiful, that you should worship them even though there might be other 59 00:04:29,730 --> 00:04:35,370 saints that might be more worthy of one's devotion. So, these weren't 60 00:04:35,370 --> 00:04:41,910 universally appreciated by all. What did these pilgrimage churches look like? 61 00:04:41,910 --> 00:04:44,670 Let's have a look at Santiago de Compostela, which would be the most 62 00:04:44,670 --> 00:04:48,930 important. It's way at the end of Spain, way in the end of northern Spain, so it 63 00:04:48,930 --> 00:04:52,110 really was at the end of the known world at that point. Remember, we haven't 64 00:04:52,110 --> 00:04:57,170 arrived in the Americas yet. So this idea that you would make a pilgrimage all the 65 00:04:57,170 --> 00:05:01,589 way out to the western coast of Spain, out to where you could pick up this kind 66 00:05:01,589 --> 00:05:07,529 scallop shell, the seashell that would mark your pilgrimage and mark the fact 67 00:05:07,529 --> 00:05:10,769 that you've made this great effort to arrive at this important church that was 68 00:05:10,769 --> 00:05:15,029 sacred to St. James. So if we look here, you can see this is a typical pilgrimage 69 00:05:15,029 --> 00:05:18,449 plan where you have radiating chapels, these little bumps sticking out at the 70 00:05:18,449 --> 00:05:22,949 end of these radiating chapels, where you can easily store relics. Also, you tend to 71 00:05:22,949 --> 00:05:28,209 see large barrel vaults done in masonry. So this adds a vaulting like the vaults 72 00:05:28,209 --> 00:05:33,769 of the heavens, but also adds a bit of fire protection, so you no longer have flat timber 73 00:05:33,769 --> 00:05:38,589 roofs, flat roofs made out of wood. This way you have a vaulted ceiling looking like the 74 00:05:38,589 --> 00:05:44,170 heavens, but also it's made of stone, so it protects your church. The downside to this 75 00:05:44,170 --> 00:05:48,670 is these are so heavy that they were very worried about poking or piercing the walls 76 00:05:48,670 --> 00:05:53,470 with windows, so you tend to see rather small windows or windows with really, really thick 77 00:05:53,470 --> 00:05:57,670 sides to them, so you don't get a lot of light in these churches. They tend to be pretty 78 00:05:58,209 --> 00:06:01,569 dark and dungeon-like. In this church here, I'm showing you an image where 79 00:06:01,569 --> 00:06:04,870 there's quite a bit of artificial illumination, but just to give you a 80 00:06:04,870 --> 00:06:08,649 sense of what that would have been like. And Santiago today has had a lot of 81 00:06:08,649 --> 00:06:12,790 changes, Baroque additions for much later, so I'm showing you a reconstruction of 82 00:06:12,790 --> 00:06:16,050 what the church would have looked like originally. And here I'm just showing you 83 00:06:16,050 --> 00:06:19,509 some important elements of Romanesque architecture. So the most important is 84 00:06:19,509 --> 00:06:24,089 this ambulatory with radiating chapels, which allows pilgrims to visit to see 85 00:06:24,089 --> 00:06:28,029 the relics without interrupting any of the rituals or liturgy going on in the 86 00:06:28,029 --> 00:06:31,250 in the nave, the area of the crossing square, the side aisle, 87 00:06:31,250 --> 00:06:35,850 the area of the transect. And just a quick note, the crossing square really was 88 00:06:35,850 --> 00:06:39,329 the way that you would measure different ratios of the church. 89 00:06:39,329 --> 00:06:43,910 So, for example, this area here between 90 00:06:43,910 --> 00:06:48,470 the column and the pier here, you have an area that would be half the size of 91 00:06:48,470 --> 00:06:52,310 the crossing square, and this area in the side aisle is one-fourth the size of the 92 00:06:52,310 --> 00:06:53,149 crossing square. 93 00:06:53,149 --> 00:06:59,120 So this way, all your measurements are related. Carry on. 94 00:06:59,120 --> 00:07:03,120 Another thing we tend to see in Romanesque churches is a lot of sculptural 95 00:07:03,120 --> 00:07:06,579 decoration, but not the kind of heavy figures that we tend to see 96 00:07:06,579 --> 00:07:10,180 in the Roman or Greek period. These figures tend to be a little bit thinner. 97 00:07:10,180 --> 00:07:11,579 Remember, the human body is 98 00:07:11,579 --> 00:07:15,000 a little bit de-emphasized, a little bit abstracted during this period. 99 00:07:15,000 --> 00:07:18,800 It emphasizes spirituality. It also keeps people from having any 100 00:07:18,800 --> 00:07:22,879 impure thoughts about the human body when you're inside church. 101 00:07:22,879 --> 00:07:26,879 So what we tend to see is along the naves and the side aisles of churches 102 00:07:26,879 --> 00:07:30,480 is we see some beautiful sculpted column capitals. So here we're looking into a 103 00:07:30,480 --> 00:07:30,980 church 104 00:07:30,980 --> 00:07:34,160 at Vézelay, and you can see 105 00:07:34,160 --> 00:07:37,439 very traditional Romanesque style, barrel vaulting, 106 00:07:37,439 --> 00:07:40,660 kind of those alternating voussoirs, which we've seen before. 107 00:07:40,660 --> 00:07:44,600 And so one example is Samson and the Lion, which is a story from the Old Testament 108 00:07:44,600 --> 00:07:47,680 that may allude to this idea of Christ's struggle 109 00:07:47,680 --> 00:07:52,240 or fight with the devil, kind of this idea of, like, fighting off sin or fighting off 110 00:07:52,240 --> 00:07:54,060 challenges, fighting off evil. 111 00:07:54,060 --> 00:07:58,519 So these often could be read on multiple levels. Another interesting one is the 112 00:07:58,519 --> 00:07:59,819 abduction of Ganymede, 113 00:07:59,819 --> 00:08:03,060 which refers back, of course, to a Greco-Roman myth 114 00:08:03,060 --> 00:08:07,680 of Zeus spotting a beautiful Trojan youth, Ganymede, and then abducting him 115 00:08:07,680 --> 00:08:11,160 and bringing him up to be with the gods to be 116 00:08:11,160 --> 00:08:15,680 on Mount Olympus. And so this is obviously a very odd selection, but it may speak to 117 00:08:15,680 --> 00:08:17,019 kind of the dangers of 118 00:08:17,019 --> 00:08:20,860 older monks preying on some of the younger boys that were entering the 119 00:08:20,860 --> 00:08:21,699 monastery, 120 00:08:21,699 --> 00:08:25,939 or just another commentary of ideas of sin in the Christian church at this time. 121 00:08:25,939 --> 00:08:29,639 So you can see this bird. Zeus was said to have transformed himself 122 00:08:29,639 --> 00:08:35,080 into a bird, into an eagle, to come and grab onto Ganymede here, who you see 123 00:08:35,080 --> 00:08:38,039 as this young boy and then this kind of devil-y creature 124 00:08:38,039 --> 00:08:43,940 grabbing onto the bird from behind. And then next, a very famous image from the 125 00:08:43,940 --> 00:08:44,980 Romanesque period 126 00:08:44,980 --> 00:08:49,100 is this idea of the mystic mill, and this also refers back to the idea of having 127 00:08:49,100 --> 00:08:50,139 the Old Testament 128 00:08:50,139 --> 00:08:54,080 and then kind of refining that as you move into the New Testament, in the 129 00:08:54,080 --> 00:08:57,500 period of Christ, and this idea of salvation being brought with Christ. 130 00:08:57,500 --> 00:09:00,980 So you have Moses here pouring grain, and of course 131 00:09:00,980 --> 00:09:04,899 grain would have really been an image that so many individuals here would have 132 00:09:04,899 --> 00:09:08,460 been familiar with, this idea of bread being important, grain being important, 133 00:09:08,460 --> 00:09:12,259 an important piece of their survival around this time. 134 00:09:12,259 --> 00:09:16,580 So you have Moses pouring grain, which symbolizes the Old Testament, into 135 00:09:16,580 --> 00:09:18,620 the mill, which is Christ, this idea of 136 00:09:18,620 --> 00:09:21,799 he's refining the message 137 00:09:21,799 --> 00:09:25,240 into this sack 138 00:09:25,240 --> 00:09:30,019 that the Apostle Paul is collecting. So, this idea of transforming the Old Testament, 139 00:09:30,019 --> 00:09:33,320 which predicts certain elements of Christ's coming, which 140 00:09:33,320 --> 00:09:36,440 tells of certain elements that are relevant 141 00:09:36,440 --> 00:09:39,659 when Christ comes, and Christ is going to refine that message 142 00:09:39,659 --> 00:09:44,100 through the New Testament, and through his arrival, and through his offer of salvation. 143 00:09:44,100 --> 00:09:48,019 So, that is represented there. We also will see it in stained glass windows later on 144 00:09:48,019 --> 00:09:52,019 and in other representations in art history. 145 00:09:52,019 --> 00:09:55,259 Another representation that we see very frequently is still this 146 00:09:55,259 --> 00:09:58,320 idea of the Last Judgment, which of course is very relevant 147 00:09:58,320 --> 00:10:02,019 around the year 1000, but remained important until later on. 148 00:10:02,019 --> 00:10:06,419 This is a tympanum, which is a semicircular form right above a portal, 149 00:10:06,419 --> 00:10:07,019 right above 150 00:10:07,019 --> 00:10:11,100 a door to a Romanesque church. This is a church in France, 151 00:10:11,100 --> 00:10:14,659 and what's important about it is we know the sculptor. We believe a sculptor named 152 00:10:14,659 --> 00:10:15,740 Gislibertus. 153 00:10:15,740 --> 00:10:20,639 It says his name, that he did this. He could be, I guess, the patron. 154 00:10:20,639 --> 00:10:24,659 That's been some people suggest that, but he 155 00:10:24,659 --> 00:10:27,700 apparently was a very well-known sculptor, had a workshop, 156 00:10:27,700 --> 00:10:31,159 and he took credit for some of these works. So we believe that he was probably the 157 00:10:31,159 --> 00:10:32,320 sculptor here. 158 00:10:32,320 --> 00:10:36,279 These bodies do tend to be more abstract, more elongated, more spiritual in their 159 00:10:36,279 --> 00:10:37,360 overall quality. 160 00:10:37,360 --> 00:10:40,519 You can see there would have been a little bit of paint applied. There's some pigment 161 00:10:40,519 --> 00:10:41,480 that survives. 162 00:10:41,480 --> 00:10:45,279 And the main idea here is you have Christ, obviously very powerful, strong, 163 00:10:45,279 --> 00:10:48,960 as judge at center. Figures who have 164 00:10:48,960 --> 00:10:52,840 been awakened and are waiting for this moment of judgment, 165 00:10:52,840 --> 00:10:57,039 kind of hesitantly along the bottom, with little angels kind of hurrying them along, 166 00:10:57,039 --> 00:11:01,500 saying, come on, come on, keep moving. And then you have figures being boosted up 167 00:11:01,500 --> 00:11:04,580 into heaven, right over here with the Virgin Mary 168 00:11:04,580 --> 00:11:08,200 on this side. So remember, Christ's blessed side is the right side, 169 00:11:08,200 --> 00:11:11,340 and more of the negative side is the left side. So, 170 00:11:11,340 --> 00:11:15,080 of course, on his left is more of the hellish side, with people being pushed 171 00:11:15,080 --> 00:11:20,059 into the hell mouth, people's souls being weighed, and these little devil figures kind of pulling on 172 00:11:20,059 --> 00:11:26,240 the scale to manipulate it. So definitely a scarier side here, and a more pleasant side here, which 173 00:11:26,240 --> 00:11:31,399 would, of course, remind people of judgment as they came into the church. So reminding them 174 00:11:31,399 --> 00:11:39,580 to behave themselves. Another reminder of behaving oneself would be this image of Eve, which we see 175 00:11:39,580 --> 00:11:44,399 in another portal of the church, in the north portal, in one of the lintels. And what we see 176 00:11:44,399 --> 00:11:47,700 here is Eve looking almost like a snake. She's kind of slithering along the 177 00:11:47,700 --> 00:11:51,840 ground there, and it's as if she's calling to Adam. We see her calling, and 178 00:11:51,840 --> 00:11:54,919 she is represented nude, but strategically covered here. She's 179 00:11:54,919 --> 00:11:59,720 grabbing onto the fruit. We see a little snake figure here, but this idea that she 180 00:11:59,720 --> 00:12:06,000 is this individual who's inciting sin, who's calling for him, and it's another 181 00:12:06,000 --> 00:12:10,559 example of Gisli Berchtes' style sculpture. Demonstrating the kind of 182 00:12:10,559 --> 00:12:14,879 spirituality of this time. If we move over to Germany, we see an individual 183 00:12:14,879 --> 00:12:20,179 named Hildegard of Bingen, or Hildegard von Bingen. This no longer survives. We 184 00:12:20,179 --> 00:12:24,059 see it here as a facsimile, so just a reproduction in color, but gives the 185 00:12:24,059 --> 00:12:29,320 sense of the kind of spiritual moments that people were having at this time, or 186 00:12:29,320 --> 00:12:33,840 were said to have been having, the intense experiences, the way they would 187 00:12:33,840 --> 00:12:37,679 describe their Christian faith. So Hildegard was one who was said to have 188 00:12:37,679 --> 00:12:43,080 have received visions. She dictated her visions to a monk, and we see her here in 189 00:12:43,080 --> 00:12:47,000 kind of one of those moments. So the architecture she's in is quite abstract. 190 00:12:47,000 --> 00:12:51,000 Her drapery is very typical of the time. It doesn't reveal a lot of the body 191 00:12:51,000 --> 00:12:55,360 underneath, very stylized drapery folds. And we see her here working away on a 192 00:12:55,360 --> 00:12:59,879 wax tablet, trying to feverishly record what's, you know, what's going on, because 193 00:12:59,879 --> 00:13:03,720 you see these little almost like flames or fingers coming down on her head. And 194 00:13:03,720 --> 00:13:07,620 so she's feverishly writing all this down, and this monk, of course, is trying 195 00:13:07,620 --> 00:13:11,700 to catch every word of it as well, just in case she misses something or in case 196 00:13:11,700 --> 00:13:16,440 it's not coming very clearly. So she started receiving these visions very 197 00:13:16,440 --> 00:13:21,120 young, and she was a very learned woman. She wrote scientific treatises and 198 00:13:21,120 --> 00:13:24,360 composed music, and she's one of the few women that we hear about from this 199 00:13:24,360 --> 00:13:29,519 period. So it's interesting to think about her role in this time. And we also 200 00:13:29,519 --> 00:13:33,899 see the Romanesque style going into places like Italy, very famous series of 201 00:13:33,899 --> 00:13:37,799 structures, which would be the cathedral complex at Pisa, most famous for its 202 00:13:37,799 --> 00:13:42,139 Campanile or its Leaning Tower here, but you have that kind of Romanesque style 203 00:13:42,139 --> 00:13:46,500 with the emphasis on semicircular arches, although because we are in Italy, we're 204 00:13:46,500 --> 00:13:50,480 still seeing a strong influence coming from ancient Roman basilicas with the 205 00:13:50,480 --> 00:13:54,019 flat roofs, and in fact this doesn't have a barrel vault. If you go inside the 206 00:13:54,019 --> 00:13:58,019 cathedral, it's a flat roof, but you do have a lot of these semicircular arches, 207 00:13:58,019 --> 00:14:01,960 and you can see later on they added Gothic elements like these gables with 208 00:14:01,960 --> 00:14:03,580 little crockets sticking out, 209 00:14:03,580 --> 00:14:08,019 kind of those prickly elements that we tend to associate with the Gothic period. 210 00:14:08,019 --> 00:14:11,220 So, the Romanesque style is definitely spreading, 211 00:14:11,220 --> 00:14:15,840 and then the Gothic style will spread later on as well. And then finally, we'll 212 00:14:15,840 --> 00:14:19,480 stop off in Italy and just briefly look at things like the Bayeux Tapestry, which 213 00:14:19,480 --> 00:14:22,220 records the Battle of Hastings, a very important battle 214 00:14:22,220 --> 00:14:25,799 in 1066, which was a battle to take over for 215 00:14:25,799 --> 00:14:30,600 King Edward. So William, who's named William the Conqueror after he wins, so 216 00:14:30,600 --> 00:14:35,039 he's the winner. He was Duke of Normandy, so the area of northern France, and he's 217 00:14:35,039 --> 00:14:39,480 going against Harold, Earl of Wessex, and this just records the entire storyline 218 00:14:39,480 --> 00:14:44,460 on a tapestry that runs over 200 feet in length, and technically it's more of an 219 00:14:44,460 --> 00:14:49,879 embroidery than a tapestry. And then we also have the development of this move 220 00:14:49,879 --> 00:14:53,399 towards more of a Gothic style with ribbed groin vaulting, which we see here 221 00:14:53,399 --> 00:14:56,759 at Durham Cathedral. So we'll move towards this idea of taller churches 222 00:14:56,759 --> 00:14:58,480 with more ornate architecture.