The Cathedrals of Northern France Part 18

_Appendices_

I

_The Architectural Divisions of France_

It is quite possible to construct an ethnographic map of a country from its architectural remains,--but there must always be diverse and varying opinions as to the delimitation of one school, as compared with another lying contiguous thereto.

One may wander from province to province, and continually find reminders, of another manner of building, from that which is recognized as the characteristic local species. This could hardly be otherwise. In the past, as in the present, imitators were not few, and if the adoption of new, or foreign, ideas was then less rapid, it was no less sure.

Still, in the main, there is a cohesiveness and limitation of architectural style in France; which, as is but natural to suppose, is in no way more clearly defined than by the churches which were built during the middle ages, the earliest types retaining the influence of ma.s.sive forms, and the later again debasing itself to a heavy cla.s.sical order, neither a copy of anything of a pre-Gothic era, or a happy development therefrom. Between the two, in a period of scarcely more than three hundred years, there grew up and developed the ingenious and graceful pointed style, in all its fearlessness and unconvention.

Political causes had, perhaps, somewhat to do with the confining of a particular style well within the land of its birth, but on the other hand, warfare carried with it invasion and conquest of new sections, and its followers, in a measure, may be said to have carried with them certain of their former arts, accomplishments, and desires; and so grew up the composite and mixed types which are frequently met with.

There are a dozen or more architectural styles in what is known as the France of to-day. The Provencal (more properly, says Fergusson, it should be called "Gallia Narbonese,") one of the most beautiful and clearly defined of all; the Burgundian, with its suggestion of luxuriance and, if not ma.s.siveness, at least grandeur; the Auvergnian, lying contiguous to both the above, with a style peculiarly its own, though of an uncompromising southern aspect; Acquitanian, defining the style which lies between Provence, the Auvergnat and the Pyrenees, and a type quite different from either. The Angevinian, which extends northward from Limoges to Normandy and Brittany, and northeasterly nearly to Orleans, is a species difficult to place--it partakes largely of southern influence, but is usually thought to merit a nomenclature of its own, as distinct from the type found at Anjou. Turning now to the northern or Frankish influence, as distinct from the Romance countries; Brittany joins to no slight degree influences of each region; Normandy partakes largely of the characteristics of the type of Central France, which is thoroughly dominated by that indigenous to the Isle of France, which species properly might include the Bourbonnais and Nivernoise variants, as being something of a distinct type, though resembling, in occasional details, southern features. This list, with the addition of French Flanders, with its Lowland types, completes the arrangement, if we except Alsace and Lorraine, which favour the German manner of building rather more than any of the native French types.