368 PHYSICAL SCIENCE IN THE MIDDLE AGES. 



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 

 significations. The plan and the front of the Cathe- 

 dral at Milan are thus represented in Cesariano's 

 work, bounded and subdivided by various equi- 

 lateral triangles ; and it is easy to see, in the ear- 

 nestness with which he points out these relations, the 

 evidence of a fanciful and mystical turn of thought 8 . 

 We thus find erudition and mysticism take the 

 place of much of that developement of the archi- 

 tectural 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 figures, for which fantastical rea- 

 sons are given, may really involve principles of 

 beauty or stability. But independently of this, we 



8 The plan which he has given, fol. 14, he has entitled 

 " Ichnographia Fundamenti sacrae JEdis baricephala 1 , Germanico 

 more, a Trigono ac Pariquadrato perstructa, uti etiam ea qua? 

 nunc Milan! videtur." 



The work of Cesariano was translated into German by 

 Gualter Rivius, and published at Nuremberg, in 1548, under 

 the title of Vitruvius Teutsch, with copies of the Italian dia- 

 grams. A few years ago, in an article in the Wiener Jahr- 

 biichtr, (Oct. Dec., 1821), the reviewer maintained, on the 

 authority of the diagrams in Rivius's book, that Gothic archi- 

 tecture had its origin in Germany, and not in England. 



