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Technical Terms and the Understanding of English Medieval Architecture

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 April 2016

E. C. Fernie
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Extract

Language has been equated with the visual arts or used to raise their status throughout the Western tradition. This is so, for example, in Antiquity with Horace’s ut pictura, poesis erit, in the Renaissance with Vasari’s relating of painting, sculpture and architecture to the work of the humanists, and in the twentieth century with the formation of groups such as Art & Language. While these explorations are on what might be called a philosophical level, language has also affected our understanding of the nuts and bolts of the arts, especially architecture, through the terms used to identify such things as styles, building types and parts of buildings. This terminology is controlled largely through glossaries, from Viollet-le-Duc’s Dictionnaire, which is in effect a collection of essays, to a series of points like those accompanying Pevsner’s Buildings of England volumes. There are also polyglot compilations such as the Glossarium Artis volumes or the Glossaire in the Zodiaque series. Despite the existence of these publications confusion and errors occur, both within individual languages and more frequently in the transfer of terms from one language to another and between disciplines. The situation between languages has improved beyond all recognition since the middle of the nineteenth century when John Parker could translate the German Kloster as ‘cloister’ instead of ‘monastery’, Kreuzgang as ‘transept’ instead of ‘crossing’, and Spaziergang as ‘ambulatory’ instead of’stroll’, though even the Glossaire in 1965 translated the French term tribune, a tribune gallery, as ‘loft’, and stylobate, a pedestal, as ‘basement table’. In the interdisciplinary sphere, the adoption by Stephen Jay Gould of the term ‘spandrel’ as a metaphor for a feature in evolutionary biology (one which is not adaptive but rather arises as a by-product of other processes) has led to the wrong element (he meant a pendentive) becoming a standard term in the science.

Type
Section 2: Terminology
Information
Architectural History , Volume 44 , 2001 , pp. 13 - 21
Copyright
Copyright © Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain 2001

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References

Notes

1 On attempts to read architecture, especially that of the later Middle Ages and the Renaissance, in terms of syntax and grammar see, for example, the essays in Crossley, P. and Clarke, G. (eds), Architecture and Language: Constructing Identity in European Architecture, c. 1100-c. 1660 (Cambridge, in press)Google Scholar.

2 Viollet-le-Duc, E. E., Dictionnaire raisonné del’architecture française du xie au xve siècle, 10 vols (Paris, 1854–68)Google Scholar; Pevsner, N., Buildings of England (Harmondsworth, 1951–)Google Scholar; Glossarium Artis: Wörterbuch zur Kunst (Tübingen, 1971–); volumes 1 to 6 have German and French, from volume 7, and in third editions of 1 to 6, they are joined by English; Glossaire de termes techniques à l’usage des lecteurs de la ‘nuit des temps’ (Zodiaque, La-Pierre-qui-Vire, 1965); the second edition has a polyglot index. Parker, J., Glossary of Terms in Grecian, Roman, Italian and Gothic Architecture (London, 1845)Google Scholar. The Zodiaque Glossaire offers a comprehensive, clear and consistent coverage of French terms with illustrations related to text in the clearest possible way; but many of the English translations are either literal or show a preference for words with a Germanic rather than a French or Latin origin, where the sense may be evident but the usage is wrong. See, for example, adossé, adossed or back-to-back, translatedas ‘leaning’; arc doubleau, a transverse arch, as ‘arch band’; base, abase, as’basis’; (mur) diaphragme, a diaphragm arch, as ‘gabled arch’; imbrication, imbrication, as ‘scale-work’; immersion, for immersion, as ‘baptism by dipping’; and le faux jour, a secondary light, as ‘wrong light’.

3 Gould, S. J. and Lewontin, R., ‘The Spandrels of San Marco and the Panglossian Paradigm: a Critique of the Adaptationist Program’, Proceedings of the Royal Society, Series B, CCV (1979), pp. 581-98CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also E. C. Fernie, ‘Art History and Evolution from Henri Focillon to Stephen Jay Gould’, forthcoming.

4 This is no doubt aided by the fact that (by contrast with the relationship between English and Anglo-Saxon), only some 400 words, such as the points of the compass and banlieu, remain in French from the original Frankish, non-Romance, component of the language.

5 The relationship of the Normans to England is different from both their manner of arrival and how they are now perceived in Wales, Ireland and especially Scotland.

6 H., and Taylor, J., Anglo-Saxon Architecture, 3 vols (Cambridge, 1965, 1965 and 1978), p. 869 Google Scholar, note the difference between the original and current meanings of belfry, but use it nonetheless. Re Berefridus, the freestanding tower in the close at Norwich which was burnt down in 1272, see the index entry in Saunders, H. W., An Introduction to the Obedientiary and Manor Rolls of Norwich Cathedral Priory (Norwich, 1930)Google Scholar, and Glossarium Artis, 2nd edn, 1, Burgen und Feste Plätze (Tübingen, 1977), p. 134.

7 Presbiterium: Edmerus, De Reliquiis S. Audoeni, quoted in Gervase, , Opera Historka, Rolls Series 73, vol. 1 Google Scholar: ‘The Chronicle of the Reigns of Stephen, Henry II, and Richard I’, ed. W. Stubbs (London, 1879), p. 7. Cancellus: Edmer, quoted in Willis, R., ‘An architectural history of Canterbury Cathedral’, 1868, reprinted in Architectural History of Some English Cathedrals: papers 1842-63, 2 vols (Chicheley, 1972, 1973): ‘On the burning and repair of Christ Church, Canterbury’, p. 17 Google Scholar. Chorus: Gervase, Opera Historica, p. 3. Sturgis, A. J., The Liturgy and its Relation to Gothic Cathedral Design and Ornamentation, in Late Twelfth- and Early Thirteenth- Century France, PhD thesis, University of London, 1990, p. 142 Google Scholar, provides clear evidence for the use of presbyterium to mean the sanctuary.

Usage was similar elsewhere in western Europe. Villard de Honnecourt uses presbitérium (or bresbiterium) for the east arm of a church ( Hahnloser, H., Villard de Honnecourt: Kritische Gesamtausgabe, 2nd edn (Graz, 1973), pls 29 and 33 Google Scholar). A reference in an eleventh-century document from Le Mans (et parti superiore, quam vulgo cancellum nominant) is of interest for its indication that cancellus could be the non-specialist term ( Busson, G. and Ledru, A. (eds), Actus pontificum Cenomannis in urbe Degentium (Archives historiques du Maine, 2) (Le Mans, 1901), p. 376 Google Scholar; in this connexion see L. Grant, ‘Naming of Parts: Describing Architecture in the High Middle Ages’, in Crossley and Clarke, Architecture and Language, p. 51.

In medieval usage both Latin sacristia and German sacristie could also on occasion refer to this area. Dominican legislation of the thirteenth century states that stone vaults should only be built over the choir and sacristy: non fiat lapidibus testudinata nisi forte super chorum et sacristiam; see Sundt, R. A., ‘ Mediocres domos et humiles habeant fratres nostri: Dominican Legislation on Architecture and Architectural Decoration in the 13 th Century’, Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, XLVI (1987), pp. 394–407 CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Cannon, J. L., Dominican Patronage of the Arts in Central Italy: the Provincia Romana, c. 1220-c. 1320, PhD thesis, University of London, 1980, pp. 74, 83, 98 Google Scholar. For the German sacristie meaning the sanctuary see A. Timmermann on the description of the Grail Temple in The Younger Titurel, paragraph 385, in Crossley and Clarke, Architecture and Language, p. 62.

8 Gervase, Opera Historka, p. 13.

9 Gervase, Opera Historka, p. 13: Supra quern murum via erat quae triforium appellatur, etfencstrae superiores; 27: Ibi triforium unum, hic duo in choro, et in ala ecclesiae tertium; see also 20 and 29. See also Willis, Architectural History of Canterbury Cathedral, p. 43, n. v. The late thirteenth-century customary of Norwich Cathedral notes that at great feasts the building should be lit with candles per triphorium superius et inferius, referring, presumably, to the clerestorey wall passage and the aisle-wide gallery above the aisle ( Tdlhurst, J. B., The Customary of the Cathedral Priory Church of Norwich, Henry Bradshaw Society, 82 (London, 1948), pp. 31, 186, 215 Google Scholar). In modern usage a passage differs from a gallery in being too narrow for processions, though ‘gallery’ is nonetheless often used for a wall passage visible from the ground.

10 Writers such as Jean Bony use the French terminology with complete consistency, but the Zodiaque Glossaire entry for triforium makes it synonymous with tribune.

11 For an example of the original meaning see Prudentius, , Psychomachia, who has Concord and Faith enthroned on a sede tribunal or sublime tribunal (Opera Omnia , 2 (London, 1824), pp. 666-67)Google Scholar. Tribuna has become the Italian word for an apse because the tribune’s seat and platform were often placed in one (offering opportunities for mistranslation), while Flemish tribune describes a stand in a sports stadium. Conversely, palatio is sometimes used in medieval documents for a tribune gallery in a church; see e.g. Mortet, V., Recueil de Textes Relatifs a l’Histoire de l’Architecture Médiévale (Paris, 1911; 2nd edn, Paris, 1994), p. 400 Google Scholar: In corona namque ecclesiae octo singulares columnae habentur circa beati Jacobi altare. Sex naviculae, quac superius in palatio ecclesiae habcntur, longitudine at latitudine tali sunt skut subjugates aliae naviculae quae sunt deorsum. See also pp. 401 and 404, and the index, p. 498.

12 There are also examples of such platforms either filling or at the ends of transept arms, as in N-D. at Jumièges and Winchester Cathedral, which may have been intended for choirs.

13 For the use of columna in Vitruvius see Bk III; for pila see V, x, 2, VI, viii, 1 (parietes, pilae, columnae), and VI, viii, 4 (Itaque si angulares pilae crunt spatiosis magnatudinibus). De Architectura, trans. Granger, F., Vitruvius on Architecture (1931, reprinted Cambridge, Mass., and London, 1970)Google Scholar. Cicero uses the variant columpna ( Lewis, C. T. and Short, C., A Latin Dictionary (Oxford, 1969)Google Scholar, columna).

14 Salzman, L., Building in England down to 1540 (Oxford, 1952; microfiche edition 1976), pp. 55, 96 Google Scholar.

15 Hahnloser, Villard de Honnecourt.

16 Alberti, Leon Battista, De re aedificatoria (Florence, 1485), facsimile, ed. Luecke, H-K. (Munich, 1975), iv, Bk I, p. 15 Google Scholar, lines 17-21, and Bk I, p. 18, lines 32-33. For translations see Leoni, J., The Architecture of Leon Battista Alberti in Ten Books (London, 1755)Google Scholar, and J. Rykwert, N. Leach, and R. Tavernor (Cambridge, Mass., 1988).

17 Coulson, C., ‘The state of research: cultural realities and reappraisals in English castle-study’, Journal of Medieval History, XXII (1996), pp. 171–208 CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and ibid., Castles in Medieval Society (Oxford, in press); Heslop, T. A., Norwich Castle Keep: Romanesque Architecture and Social Context (Norwich, 1994 Google Scholar). The confusion caused by treating a castle as a military building separate from the class of dwellings in general is paralleled in the classifying of the main vessel of a secular aisled hall as something different from the nave of a great church. In terms of their significance they are and were very different, but technically they were identical. Thus William II’s hall at Westminster, while huge by the standards of contemporary halls, would have been no more difficult to build than the naves of most contemporary great churches.

18 Fora good cross-section of examples see Salzman, Building in England, pp. 83, 269, 280–84, 378, 418, 435, 484, 545.

19 Salzman, p. 281, cites uses of garderobe in this sense in 1314 and 1365, and the Revised Medieval Latin Word List from British and Irish Sources, ed. Latham, R. E. (London, 1965), records two, in 1313 and 1377 Google Scholar.

20 Derrida, J., Writing and Difference, trans. Bass, A. (London, 1978), p. 25 Google Scholar. Derrida himself inadvertently indicates that he cannot do without the assumption that meaning is in fact communicable. At one point in an article in response to J. R. Searle’s critical assessment of his argument, exasperated by what he sees as Searle’s obtuseness, Derrida expostulates, ‘I would have thought that a neologism, in italics would be sufficiently clear to an attentive reader’ or indeed to ‘any reader with even the slightest vigilance’. ‘Limited Inc, abc. . .’, Glyph, II (1977), pp. 179-81, 187-93.