xviii INTRODUCTION. 



pushed to extremes. It might have seemed as if the national style 

 was about to enter upon a new cycle of evolution. But it contained in 

 itself the germs of decay, and many causes contributed to render it 

 unsuitable to meet the requirements of a civilisation which was being 

 transformed by powerful agencies, unless it were itself transmuted in 

 like manner. 



It was an inevitable condition of mediaeval art to be moulded by 

 the Church. The Church was the all-embracing medium of human 

 activity ; and the strenuous life of mediaeval Europe naturally found its 

 artistic expression in the building and decoration of churches, whether 

 the immediate motive were spiritual fervour, local patriotism, or family 

 pride. Such was the splendour of the results, that all contemporary 

 building was moulded to the ecclesiastical style, even in the case of 

 military architecture, which in the main was the outcome of the 

 utilitarian considerations of warfare. But in the late fifteenth 

 century the Church had lost her moral and intellectual superiority. 

 Gorgeous ceremonial and a multiplicity of observances took the place 

 of zeal and faith. The lives of the clergy were often worldly, if not 

 scandalous, and they not infrequently ranged themselves on the side of 

 obscurantism, while the spread of culture and classical studies was 

 weakening their hold on men's minds. The ascetic conception of 

 life of the Middle Ages had already broken down in practice ; the 

 humanistic gospel of self-cultivation and the joy of life now swept away 

 the embargo which the Church had laid on the free exercise of all 

 bodily and mental powers. 



Since the ideal mediaeval church consisted, as it has been said, of a 

 stone roof, or rather ceiling, and of glass walls, the efforts of the builders 

 had been concentrated upon the carrying of rib vaults on the minimum 

 of direct support by a nicely calculated system of thrust and counter- 

 thrust. But this system had outlived its raison d'etre. France was 

 well equipped with places of worship ; and the mysteries of vaulting 

 held no secrets for the maitres d'ceuvres. No further progress was 

 possible in that direction, and the need was for systems of wider 

 adaptability. 



In so far as Gothic architecture was military it had also survived its 

 use and efficiency. The knell of feudalism and private warfare had 

 rung, and the towered stone-built castle could not resist artillery. 

 Since fortification was now controlled by the central government and 

 applied almost exclusively to cities and frontier fortresses, and since it 

 consisted more and more of earthworks, its design provided an ever- 

 diminishing scope for architecture proper, whose mission was increas- 

 ingly the housing of peaceful citizens. Then mediaeval architecture was 

 in large measure the result of corporate energies, the outcome of a 

 period when the State was a mere aggregation of corporations. Gothic 



