Cultural and Artistic Antecedents : Clairvaux 345 



There is in your land a property belonging to your Lord and mine, 

 for which He preferred to die rather than it should be lost. This I have 

 formed a plan for recovering, and am sending a party of my brave 

 followers to seek, recover, and hold it with strong hand, if this does not 

 displease you. And these scouts whom you see before you I have sent 

 beforehand on this business to investigate wisely the state of things, 

 and bring me faithful word again. Be so kind as to assist them as mes- 

 sengers of your Lord, and in their persons fulfil your feudal duty to Him. 

 I pray Him to render you, in return, happy and illustrious, to His honor, 

 and to the salvation of your soul, to the safety and peace of your country, 

 and to continue to you happiness and contentment to the end of your 

 days.'^ 



In 1131 these monks were settled at Rievaulx, in Yorkshire, by 

 Walter Espec. Monks from Rievaulx, in turn, founded, or rather 

 refounded, Melrose in 1136. Melrose founded Newbattle in 1140, 

 and Holmcultram and Kinloss in 1150. From Rievaulx directly 

 came not only Melrose, but Dundrennan (1142) ; while the church 

 of RuthweU seems to have been named from the same Yorkshire 

 abbey, as that, in turn, modeled its name upon Clairvaux. The 

 influence of Rievaulx in southwestern Scotland appears in the 

 journey of Ailred of Rievaulx into Galloway (1164), at that time a 

 savage region. ^ 



Melrose itself is clearly a building wrought under French influence. 



The exterior of Melrose is in some respects more French in appearance 

 than any ecclesiastical edifice in Scotland. The prominent buttresses 

 are provided with canopied niches, some of which retain their sculp- 

 ture ; slender pier buttresses rising through the aisle roof to support 

 sets of two flying buttresses are also adorned with niches and terminate 

 in richly decorated Gothic pinnacles. The deep mouldings, the wealth 

 of grotesque gargoyles and other figures, make it seem so hke early 

 French Gothic work that we may assume a French architect, or at 

 least a student of French architecture, designed portions of the 

 abbey, and that some of the builders, those Cistercian monks, had 

 come from France. The sculpture within and without is rich and 

 plentiful for a northern chme. The interior abounds in beautiful 

 capitals and mouldings carved in most deUcate fohate designs. The 

 variety is remarkable, almost all of the native leaves being wrought 

 in the hard brown stone ; the oak leaf and the thistle being prominent. 

 Most graceful and flowing and most deeply carved is the capital of the 



^ Eales, Some Letters of Saint Bernard, pp. 121-3 ; cf. p. 120, above. 

 2 Diet. Nat. Biog. 18. 33 ; cf. Brown, Hist. Scot. 1. 1, 45; Lang, Hist. 

 Scot. 1. 154. 



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