Ottonian Art
Charlemagne was buried in the Palatine Chapel at Aachen. His
empire survived him by fewer than 30 years. When his son Louis the
Pious died in 840, Louis’s sons—Charles the Bald, Lothair, and Louis
the German—divided the Carolingian Empire among themselves.
After bloody conflicts, the brothers signed a treaty at Verdun in 843
partitioning the Frankish lands into western, central, and eastern
areas, very roughly foreshadowing the later nations of France and
Germany and a third realm corresponding to a long strip of land
stretching from the Netherlands and Belgium to Rome. Intensified
Viking incursions helped bring about the collapse of the Carolin-
gians. The empire’s breakup into weak kingdoms, ineffectual against
the invasions, brought a time of confusion to Europe. Complement-
ing the Viking scourge in Europe were the invasions of the Magyars
in the Byzantine East and the plundering and piracy of the Saracens
(Muslims) in the Mediterranean.
Only in the mid-10th century did the eastern part of the former
empire consolidate under the rule of a new Saxon line of German
emperors called, after the names of the three most illustrious family
members, the Ottonians.The pope crowned the first Otto (r. 936–973)
in Rome in 962, and Otto assumed the title of emperor of Rome that
Charlemagne’s weak successors held during most of the previous cen-
tury. The three Ottos made headway against the invaders from the
East, remained free from Viking attacks, and not only preserved but
also enriched the culture and tradition of the Carolingian period. The
Christian Church, which had become corrupt and disorganized,
recovered in the 10th century under the influence of a great monastic
reform that the Ottonians encouraged and sanctioned. The new Ger-
man emperors also cemented ties with Italy and the papacy. By the
time the last of the Ottonian line, Henry II, died in the early 11th cen-
tury, the pagan marauders had become Christianized and settled, and
the monastic reforms had been highly successful.
Architecture
Ottonian architects followed the course of their Carolingian prede-
cessors, building basilican churches with towering spires and impos-
ing westworks, but they also introduced new features that would
have a long future in western European church architecture.
GERNRODEThe best preserved 10th-century Ottonian basilica
is Saint Cyriakus at Gernrode. The church was the centerpiece of a
convent founded in 961. Construction of the church began the same
year. In the 12th century, a large apse replaced the western entrance,
but the upper parts of the westwork, including the two cylindrical
towers, were left intact. The interior (FIG. 16-21), although heavily
restored in the 19th century, retains its 10th-century character. Saint
Cyriakus reveals how Ottonian architects enriched the form of the
Early Christian basilica. The church has a transept at the east with a
square choir in front of the apse. The nave is one of the first in west-
ern Europe to incorporate a gallery between the ground-floor arcade
and the clerestory, a design that became very popular in the succeed-
ing Romanesque era (see Chapter 17). Scholars have reached no
consensus on the function of these galleries in Ottonian churches.
They cannot have been reserved for women, as some think they were
in Byzantium, because Saint Cyriakus is a nuns’ church. One sugges-
tion is that the galleries housed additional altars, as in the westwork
at Corvey. They may also have been where the choirs sang. The
Gernrode builders also transformed the nave arcade itself by adopt-
ing the alternate-support system,in which heavy square piers alter-
nate with columns, dividing the nave into vertical units. The division
continues into the gallery level, breaking the smooth rhythm of the
all-column arcades of Early Christian and Carolingian basilicas and
leading the eye upward. Later architects would carry this “vertical-
ization” of the basilican nave much further (FIG. 18-19).
HILDESHEIM One of the great patrons of Ottonian art and ar-
chitecture was Bishop Bernward of Hildesheim, Germany. He was
the tutor of Otto III (r. 983–1002) and builder of the abbey church
of Saint Michael (FIG. 16-22) at Hildesheim. Bernward, who made
Hildesheim a center of learning, was an eager scholar, a lover of the
arts, and, according to Thangmar of Heidelberg, his biographer, an
expert craftsman and bronze caster. In 1001, Bernward traveled to
Rome as the guest of Otto III. During this stay, he studied at first
hand the monuments of the empire the Carolingian and Ottonian
emperors revered.
Constructed between 1001 and 1031 (and rebuilt after being
bombed during World War II), Saint Michael’s has a double-transept
plan (FIG. 16-23,bottom), tower groupings, and a westwork. The
two transepts create eastern and western centers of gravity. The nave
merely seems to be a hall that connects them. Lateral entrances lead-
ing into the aisles from the north and south additionally make for
an almost complete loss of the traditional basilican orientation to-
ward the east. Some ancient Roman basilicas, such as the Basilica
Ulpia (FIG. 10-43,no. 4) in Trajan’s Forum, also had two apses and422 Chapter 16 EARLY MEDIEVAL EUROPE16-21Nave of the church of Saint Cyriakus, Gernrode, Germany,
961–973.
Ottonian builders modified the interior elevation of the Early Christian
basilica. The Gernrode designer added a gallery above the nave arcade
and adopted an alternate-support system of piers and columns.