250 PHYSICAL SCIENCE IN THE MIDDLE AGES. 



must needs be their masters, led these writers to subordinate the mem- 

 bers of their own architecture to the precepts of the Roman author. 

 We have Gothic shafts, mouldings, and arrangements, given as paral- 

 lelisms to others, which profess to represent the Roman style, but 

 which are, in fact, examples of that mixed manner which is called the 

 style of the Cinque cento by the Italians, of the Renaissance by the 

 French, and which is commonly included in our Elizabethan. But iu 

 the early architectural works, besides the superstitions and mistaken 

 erudition which thus choked the growth of real architectural doctrines, 

 another of the peculiar elements of the middle ages comes into view ; 

 its mysticism. The dimensions and positions of the various parts of 

 edifices and of their members, are determined by drawing triangles, 

 squares, circles, and other figures, in such a manner as to bound them ; 

 and to these geometrical figures were assigned many abstruse signifi- 

 cations. The plan and the front of the Cathedral at Milan are thus 

 represented in Cesariano's work, bounded and subdivided by various 

 equilateral triangles; and it is easy to see, in the earnestness with 

 which he points out these relations, the evidence of a fanciful and mys- 

 tical turn of thought. 9 



O 



We thus fiud erudition and mysticism take the place of much of 

 that development of the architectural principles of the middle ages 

 which would be so interesting to us. Still, however, these works are 

 by no means without their value. Indeed many of the arts appear to 

 flourish not at all the worse, for being treated in a manner somewhat 

 mystical ; and it may easily be, that the relations of geometrical fig- 

 ures, for which fantastical reasons are given, may really involve prin- 

 ciples of beauty or stability. But independently of this, we find, in 

 the best works of the architects of all ages (including engineers), evi- 

 dence that the true idea of mechanical pressure exists among them 

 more distinctly than among men in general, although it may not be 

 developed in a scientific form. This is true up to our own time, and 

 the arts which such persons cultivate could not be successfully exer- 



9 The plan which he lias given, fol. 14, lie has entitled " Iclinosrraphia Funda- 

 menti sacras ^Edis baricephalse, Germanico more, a Trigono ac Pariquadrnto per- 

 Btructa, uti etiarn ea quas nunc Milani videtur." 



The work of Cesariano was translated into German by Gtialter Eivius, and pub- 

 lished at Nuremberg, iu 1548, under the title of Vitrvvius Tc-utsch, with copies oi 

 the Italian diagrams. A few years ago, in ail article in the Wiener Jahr1u.cli.er 

 (Oct. Dec., 1821), the reviewer maintained, on the authority of the diagrams in 

 Rivius's book, that Gothic architecture had its origin in Germany and not iu Eng- 

 land. 



