42 THE ORIGINS OF FREEMASONRY FROM ANCIENT TIMES TO THE MIDDLE AGES
between Gothic and Romanesque art, between secular architects
and monks, the latter authors and stubborn preservers of
Romanesque style, the former revolutionaries of the ogival style.*In fact, there were secular Romanesque architects, such as Walter
Coorland, a native Englishman, who provided in the second quarter of
the eleventh century the blueprints for Saint Hilaire in Poitiers. Others
include Benoit, architect of Saint Eutropes de Saintes around 1075;
Gislevert, who worked on Saint Ouen in Rouen around 1100; Jean, a
bourgeois of Saint Quentin in 1113; and Gervais, who built a cathedral
in Beziers in the second half of the twelfth century.
In any case, what is at play here is a partial approach to the facts. In
medieval society, whether twelfth or thirteenth century, Romanesque or
Gothic, art in both its concept and creation was religious at heart. It
expressed only the directives of the Church, which gave long and detailed
guidelines for artists and their works, priests, and liturgists. Nothing was
left to the artists except for their skill and ability to execute.
To dispel any misunderstandings that may linger, it should be
emphasized that the Benedictines at Cluny and Citeaux were by and
large the source of the Gothic style. One author, alluding to the roughly
350 monasteries that made up the religious community of Citeaux in the
middle of the twelfth century, suggested that "thanks to their coloniza-
tion practices ... they were the first missionaries of Gothic art. In archi-
tectural technique if not in decor, though, the two branches of the order
were quite opposite. The Cistercians, however, who came later, played
the main role in the propagation of the Gothic style. They did for Gothic
architecture what the monks of Cluny had done for the Romanesque.+
It is in Norman territory at the end of the eleventh century where
we must search for the first manifestation of the French ogival rib. The
aisle of the Anglo-Norman cathedral of Durham, dated convincingly to
- Anthyme Saint-Paul, Histoire monumentale de la France (Paris: Editions Hachette,
1932), 89. We cannot stress too strongly the inexactitude of this legend, still commonly
accepted by some Freemasons, such as L. Lachat, who view these Gothic cathedral
builders as the precursors of freethinkers and anti+ clericalists.
Ibid., 241. For more on the Cistercian influence on the continuity between the
Romanesque and the Gothic, see also Henri Focillon, Art d'Occident, vol. 2 (Paris:
Librairie Armand Colin, 1971), 56 ff.