France and Northern Spain
Although art historians use the adjective “Romanesque” to describe
11th- and 12th-century art and architecture throughout Europe, pro-
nounced regional differences exist. The discussion in this chapter deals
in turn with Romanesque France and Spain, the Holy Roman Empire,
Italy, and Normandy and England. To a certain extent, Romanesque art
and architecture parallel European Romance languages, which vary re-
gionally but have a common core in Latin, the language of the Romans.Architecture and
Architectural Sculpture
The regional diversity of the Romanesque period is very evident in
architecture. For example, some Romanesque churches, especially in
Italy, retained the wooden roofs of their Early Christian predecessors
long after stone vaulting had become commonplace elsewhere. Even
in France and northern Spain, home of many of the most innovative
instances of stone vaulting, some Romanesque architects still built
timber-roofed churches.
SAINT-ÉTIENNE, VIGNORYThe mid-11th-century church
of Saint-Étienne (Saint Stephen) at Vignory in the Champagne region
of central France has strong ties to Carolingian-Ottonian architecture
but already incorporates features that became widely adopted only in
later Romanesque architecture. The interior (FIG. 17-2) reveals a kin-
ship with the three-story wooden-roofed churches of the Ottonian
era, for example, Saint Cyriakus (FIG. 16-21) at Gernrode. At Vignory,
however, the second story is not a true tribune (upper gallery over the
aisle opening onto the nave) but rather a screen with alternating piers
and columns opening onto very tall flanking aisles. The east end of
the church, in contrast, has an innovative plan (FIG. 17-3) with an17-2Interior of Saint-Étienne, Vignory, France, 1050–1057.
The timber-roofed abbey church of Saint Stephen at Vignory reveals
a kinship with the three-story naves of Ottonian churches (FIG. 16-21),
which also feature an alternate-support system of piers and columns.
N0 10 20 30 40
50 feet
0 5 10 1 5 meters543221517-3Plan of Saint-
Étienne, Vignory, France,
1050–1057. (1) nave,
(2) aisles, (3) choir,
(4) ambulatory,
(5) radiating chapels.
The innovative plan of
the east end of the Vignory
abbey church features
an ambulatory around
the choir and three semi-
circular radiating chapels
opening onto it for the
display of relics.who witnessed the coming of the new millennium, described the sud-
den boom in church building:
[After the] year of the millennium, which is now about three years
past, there occurred, throughout the world, especially in Italy and
Gaul, a rebuilding of church basilicas. Notwithstanding, the greater
number were already well established and not in the least in need,
nevertheless each Christian people strove against the others to erect
nobler ones. It was as if the whole earth, having cast off the old by
shaking itself, were clothing itself everywhere in the white robe of
the church.^1
The enormous investment in ecclesiastical buildings and furnish-
ings also reflected a significant increase in pilgrimage traffic in Ro-
manesque Europe (see “Pilgrimages and the Cult of Relics,” page 432).
Pilgrims, along with wealthy landowners, were important sources of
funding for monasteries that possessed the relics of venerated saints.
The clergy of these monasteries vied with one another to provide mag-
nificent settings for the display of their relics. Justification for such
heavy investment in buildings and furnishings could be found in the
Bible itself, for example in Psalm 26:8, “Lord, I have loved the beauty
of your house, and the place where your glory dwells.” Traveling pil-
grims fostered the growth of towns as well as monasteries. Pilgrimages
were, in fact, a major economic as well as conceptual catalyst for
the art and architecture of the Romanesque period.
France and Northern Spain 43317-2ASaint-
Philibert, Tour-
nus, ca. 1060.17-2BSant
Vicenç,
Cardona,
ca. 1029–1040.