Medieval Art, Architecture, and Intellectual Life (1000

In a famous passage, the abbot Suger of Saint-Denis, who was rebuilding the choir of his abbey church in the 1140s, wrote that the new architecture he was pioneering should “lift up the mind from the material to the immaterial” — that the light passing through the stained glass should be read by the worshipper as a manifestation of the divine light. Suger’s small treatise De administratione (c. 1147) is the founding document of Gothic art theory; the church he rebuilt, the Abbey of Saint-Denis outside Paris, is the founding building of the Gothic style. Charles Haskins’s The Renaissance of the Twelfth Century (1927) is the founding book of the wider cultural history of the period — the argument that c. 1050–1250 saw a recovery of classical learning, the rise of the universities, the codification of theology, and a literary and artistic production that the later Italian Renaissance would imitate rather than invent. This pillar follows Haskins on the periodisation, Otto von Simson on the Gothic cathedral, Jacques Verger on the universities, and R. W. Southern on the intellectual culture that fed scholasticism.

The five clusters attached to this pillar examine the parts: Romanesque and Gothic architecture (the round arch and the pointed arch, the pilgrimage church and the cathedral, the technical revolution of the twelfth century), the medieval universities (Bologna, Paris, Oxford, the studium generale, the four faculties), scholasticism and Thomas Aquinas (the encounter with Aristotle, the method of quaestio, the great scholastics), troubadours and medieval literature (the vernacular poetry of southern France, the chanson de geste, the Arthurian romance), and chivalry and courtly love (the knightly code, the cult of the lady, the fin’amor).

Romanesque Architecture: The First Great Style of Medieval Europe

The Romanesque style dominated the architecture of Western Europe from the mid-tenth century to the mid-twelfth. The name, coined in the nineteenth century, reflects the use of elements borrowed from Roman architecture: the rounded arch, the barrel vault, the massive piers, and the crenellated walls. Romanesque buildings were characterized by their heaviness, their solidity, and their fortress-like appearance, qualities that reflected both the engineering requirements of the technology and the unsettled conditions of the period.

The pilgrimage churches of the Romanesque period are among the most impressive surviving examples of the style. The great monastery of Santiago de Compostela in northwestern Spain, the destination of one of the major medieval pilgrimages, was rebuilt in the Romanesque style in the late eleventh century. The church of Sainte-Foy at Conques in southern France, with its remarkable tympanum depicting the Last Judgment, is one of the masterpieces of the period. The Abbey of Cluny, the head of the great Cluniac monastic order, was the largest church in Christendom before its destruction during the French Revolution.

Romanesque architecture was regional in character. The Lombard style of northern Italy, the Norman style of England and Normandy, the Rhenish style of Germany, and the Tuscan style of central Italy all had their own distinct features. The diversity of Romanesque architecture reflects the regional traditions of the various parts of Europe, but the underlying principles — the use of the round arch, the barrel vault, the thick walls, and the small windows — were common to all.

The decoration of Romanesque churches was elaborate and symbolic. The tympanum above the main portal was typically filled with a sculptured representation of the Last Judgment, the Majesty of Christ, or some other scene of Christian salvation. The capital of each column was carved with figures of saints, monsters, biblical scenes, or allegorical subjects. The interior walls were often covered with frescoes depicting biblical scenes and the lives of the saints. The illumination of manuscripts was another major art form of the Romanesque period, with the great monastic scriptoria producing some of the most beautiful books of the entire Middle Ages.

Gothic Architecture: The Triumph of Light

The Gothic style emerged in the mid-twelfth century in the Ile-de-France, the region around Paris, and gradually spread across Europe over the following centuries. The name “Gothic” was a later invention, applied by Renaissance writers who considered the style barbaric; the medieval people who created the great Gothic cathedrals would not have recognized the term.

The Gothic style was made possible by a series of engineering innovations that allowed builders to construct taller, lighter, and more flexible buildings than ever before. The pointed arch, which had been used in Islamic architecture and was introduced to Western Europe through contact with the East, allowed builders to direct the thrust of the vault more efficiently than the rounded arch. The ribbed vault, which concentrated the weight of the ceiling on a few points, reduced the overall weight of the roof and made it possible to use thinner walls. The flying buttress, an external support that transferred the thrust of the vault to a pier outside the building, allowed for the elimination of the heavy internal buttresses and the use of large windows.

The result of these innovations was a new kind of building: the Gothic cathedral, with its soaring vaults, its vast stained-glass windows, its light-filled interior, and its symbolic and decorative program that proclaimed the glory of God and the power of the Church. The first great Gothic building was the choir of the Abbey of Saint-Denis, north of Paris, rebuilt under the direction of Abbot Suger in the 1140s. The cathedral of Notre-Dame de Paris, begun in 1163, became the model for Gothic architecture across Europe. The cathedral of Chartres, rebuilt after a fire in 1194, was the masterpiece of the early Gothic; its sculptural program and its stained glass are among the supreme achievements of medieval art. The cathedral of Reims, where the kings of France were crowned, and the cathedral of Amiens, the tallest of the French Gothic cathedrals, were the high points of the mature style.

The High Gothic of the thirteenth century produced even more ambitious buildings. The cathedral of Beauvais, with its choir reaching 48 meters in height, was the tallest building in medieval Europe, although its nave was never completed. The Sainte-Chapelle in Paris, built by King Louis IX to house the relic of the Crown of Thorns, is a masterpiece of stained glass and a symbol of the French monarchy’s claim to be the champion of Christendom. The cathedral of Cologne in Germany, begun in 1248, was the largest Gothic building in northern Europe.

The Gothic style spread across Europe in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, producing a wide variety of regional variants. The English Gothic of Canterbury Cathedral and Westminster Abbey was characterized by its rectangular east end, its elaborate decorative tracery, and its emphasis on horizontal lines. The German Gothic of Cologne Cathedral and Strasbourg Cathedral was characterized by its tall, narrow proportions and its elaborate sculptural decoration. The Italian Gothic of the cathedrals of Milan, Florence, and Siena was characterized by its colored marble facades, its painted interiors, and its integration with civic life.

The Gothic cathedral was not merely a building; it was a theological statement in stone, glass, and light. The vertical thrust of the building was a symbol of the soul’s aspiration toward God. The stained-glass windows, with their scenes from the Bible and the lives of the saints, were a Biblia Pauperum — a Bible of the poor, who could not read. The sculptural program, with its figures of kings, prophets, apostles, and saints, told the story of Christian salvation. The ritual of the liturgy, performed in the choir, was the central act of the community’s religious life.

The Rise of the University

The medieval university was one of the most important institutional innovations of the medieval period. The university was a corporation of teachers and students, organized to provide advanced instruction in the higher branches of learning and to award the license to teach that was required for an academic career.

The first universities emerged in the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries. The University of Bologna, founded around 1088, was the oldest, and it specialized in the study of law — both the civil law of the Corpus Juris Civilis (the code of Roman law rediscovered in the eleventh century) and the canon law of the Church. The University of Paris, which grew out of the cathedral school of Notre-Dame in the late twelfth century, was the center of theological and philosophical study. The University of Oxford developed in the early thirteenth century, perhaps as an off-shoot of the University of Paris, and it became the major English university. The University of Cambridge was established in 1209 by a group of scholars who left Oxford after a dispute with the townspeople.

The curriculum of the medieval university was organized around the seven liberal arts — the trivium (grammar, rhetoric, dialectic) and the quadrivium (arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, music) — followed by the higher faculties of theology, law, medicine, and (in some universities) arts. The master’s degree was the basic qualification for teaching, and the doctorate was the higher qualification in the professional faculties.

The method of teaching was the lecture (from the Latin legere, to read) and the disputation. The lecturer read a standard text (such as the Sentences of Peter Lombard in theology, the Corpus Juris Civilis in law, or the works of Aristotle in philosophy) and provided commentary on it. The disputation was a formal debate in which students defended or attacked a thesis, with the master presiding and ruling on the arguments. The disputation was the model for the great scholastic summae, which attempted to resolve the major questions of theology and philosophy in a systematic way.

The students of the medieval university came from all over Europe. The University of Paris in the thirteenth century had students from France, England, Germany, Italy, Spain, and the Scandinavian countries, organized into nations (groups of students from a particular region) that competed for power in the university. The students, who were often young men in their late teens or early twenties, lived in hostels or, increasingly in the later Middle Ages, in colleges — endowed foundations that provided residence, tutorial instruction, and sometimes meals.

The university as an institution was a corporation with the right to make its own rules, to discipline its members, to award degrees, and to be exempt from the authority of the local bishop or the town government. The rector (in some universities) or the chancellor (in others) was the chief officer, and the faculty of arts was often the largest and most powerful faculty. The papal charter or the royal charter that established the university gave it the right to award degrees that were valid throughout Christendom, and the ius ubique docendi (the right to teach everywhere) was a powerful attraction of the medieval university.

Scholasticism: The Reconciliation of Faith and Reason

The dominant intellectual movement of the High Middle Ages was scholasticism, a method of inquiry that sought to reconcile the truths of Christian faith with the findings of human reason, especially the philosophy of Aristotle, whose works were rediscovered through Arabic translations in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.

The scholastic method was a systematic procedure for analyzing and resolving questions. It began with the question (a specific problem to be resolved), proceeded to the objections (the arguments against the proposed answer), then to the sed contra (the strongest argument for the opposite position), then to the body of the article (the systematic presentation of the position), and finally to the replies to the objections (the refutation of the counter-arguments). This method, sometimes called the disputative method, was the standard form of theological and philosophical inquiry in the medieval university.

The major works of scholasticism were the summae — systematic treatises that attempted to cover the whole of theology or philosophy in a single work. The Sentences of Peter Lombard (c. 1150) was the standard textbook of theology in the medieval university, and the commentary on the Sentences was the most common academic exercise of a young theologian. The Summa Theologica of Thomas Aquinas (c. 1265–1274) was the greatest of the scholastic summae, an encyclopedic work that attempted to synthesize the whole of Christian theology with the philosophy of Aristotle.

The encounter with Aristotelian philosophy was one of the most important intellectual events of the medieval period. The works of Aristotle — on logic, physics, metaphysics, ethics, politics, and the soul — had been largely unknown in Western Europe during the early Middle Ages, but they were gradually translated from Arabic and Greek in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. The introduction of Aristotelian philosophy challenged the existing Christian synthesis and produced a series of intellectual crises, especially at the University of Paris, where the Arts Faculty was accused of over-emphasizing Aristotle at the expense of Christian doctrine.

The condemnations of 1277, issued by the bishop of Paris, Stephen Tempier, condemned 219 propositions that were held to be dangerous to the faith, including a number of Aristotelian theses. The condemnations were a major blow to the more radical Aristotelians, but they did not stop the integration of Aristotle into Christian thought. Thomas Aquinas, who had been a master at Paris, integrated Aristotle into his theological system in a way that the bishop had not intended, and the Thomistic synthesis became the dominant intellectual tradition of the late medieval Church.

The scholastic philosophers were not uniform in their approach. The Augustinians emphasized the authority of St. Augustine and the theory of illumination (the idea that human knowledge is ultimately derived from divine illumination). The Aristotelians, including Aquinas, emphasized the role of reason and natural knowledge. The Franciscan school — represented by St. Bonaventure (1221–1274) and John Duns Scotus (c. 1266–1308) — developed a distinctive approach that emphasized the will and the freedom of God. The Occamists, following William of Ockham (c. 1287–1347), emphasized the limits of human reason and the doctrine of divine omnipotence, in a way that would eventually lead to the breakdown of the scholastic synthesis.

The influence of scholasticism on Western thought was immense. The method of systematic disputation became the standard form of academic inquiry in the medieval university, and the distinction between faith and reason, the doctrine of natural law, the theory of the soul, and the philosophy of nature developed by the scholastics became central to the Western intellectual tradition. The works of Aquinas, in particular, became the philosophical foundation of the Catholic Church and remain a major influence on Catholic thought today.

Vernacular Literature and the Troubadour Tradition

The medieval period saw the emergence of a rich and varied vernacular literature in the languages of Western Europe. French, German, English, Italian, Spanish, and Provençal all produced major works of poetry, prose, and drama that would shape the literary traditions of their respective languages for centuries.

The troubadour tradition of southern France was one of the most influential of these literary movements. The troubadours, who flourished from the late eleventh to the early thirteenth centuries, were poets who composed in Old Occitan (the language of the troubadours) on themes of chivalry, courtly love, and aristocratic values. The most famous of the troubadours — Guilhem IX of Aquitaine, Bernart de Ventadorn, Raimbaut d’Aurenga, Dante Alighieri (in his De Vulgari Eloquentia ranked the troubadours as the supreme poets of the vernacular) — developed a sophisticated poetic style that included the canso (love song), the sirventes (a satirical or moralizing poem), the tenson (a debate poem), and the pastourelle (a poem in which a knight meets a shepherdess).

The troubadour tradition spread from southern France to northern France, where it influenced the trouvères, the poets of northern France who composed in Old French (the language of the langue d’oïl). The trouvères of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries — Chrétien de Troyes, Conon de Béthune, Thibaut de Champagne — adapted the troubadour themes and forms to the tastes of the northern aristocracy.

The German Minnesang was a parallel tradition of courtly poetry that flourished in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. The German Minnesänger, including Walther von der Vogelweide (c. 1170–c. 1230), Reinmar der Alte, and Hartmann von Aue, adapted the themes of the troubadours to the German cultural and political context. The Nibelungenlied, an epic poem of the early thirteenth century, drew on older Germanic heroic material and combined it with courtly elements in a way that was characteristic of the medieval period.

The Arthurian legends were one of the most enduring products of the medieval literary imagination. The legends of King Arthur, Lancelot, Ginevra, Tristan and Isolde, Perceval, and the Holy Grail were developed by a series of French, German, and English writers in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. The Roman de Brut (1155) of Wace and the Historia Regum Britanniae (c. 1136) of Geoffrey of Monmouth established the basic Arthurian story. The romances of Chrétien de Troyes — Erec et Enide, Cligès, Lancelot, Yvain, and Perceval — transformed the legends into the form that has been inherited by the modern world. The German adaptations of Wolfram von Eschenbach (the Parzival) and Hartmann von Aue (the Erec and Iwein) added further dimensions to the legend.

The chanson de geste (“song of heroic deeds”) was another major French literary tradition. The Chanson de Roland, the most famous of the chansons de geste, was composed in the late eleventh century and tells the story of the death of Roland, the commander of Charlemagne’s rearguard, in a battle in the Pyrenees. The chanson de geste celebrated the heroic values of the feudal aristocracy, and it was one of the most popular literary forms of the medieval period.

The Italian literature of the High Middle Ages was more limited in scope but was of great importance for the later development of the Italian language and literature. The Sicilian School of poetry at the court of Frederick II in the thirteenth century adapted the troubadour tradition to Italian. The Dolce Stil Novo (“Sweet New Style”) of the late thirteenth century, represented by Guido Guinizelli and Guido Cavalcanti, refined the troubadour themes into a more philosophical and introspective poetry that would influence Dante Alighieri.

Dante Alighieri (1265–1321) was the supreme poet of the Middle Ages. His Divine Comedy — comprising the Inferno, the Purgatorio, and the Paradiso — is one of the supreme works of world literature. In it, Dante tells the story of his journey through Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise, guided first by the Roman poet Virgil and then by his beloved Beatrice. The Divine Comedy is a comprehensive synthesis of medieval Christian thought, of medieval political and ecclesiastical life, and of the Italian literary tradition. It established the Tuscan dialect as the standard literary language of Italy, and it has been a touchstone of Western literature ever since.

The Code of Chivalry and Courtly Love

The code of chivalry was a set of ideals and practices that governed the behavior of the medieval knight. Although the code was never a single, formal document, it was a real and powerful influence on the self-understanding of the aristocratic class of the medieval period. The chivalric ideal combined the warrior virtues of courage, loyalty, and honor with the Christian virtues of piety, charity, and the protection of the weak. The ideal knight was brave in battle, generous to his peers, courteous to ladies, and reverent toward God.

The code of chivalry was elaborated in the literature of the period, especially in the chansons de geste, the romances, and the courtesy books of the later Middle Ages. The Lancelot of Chrétien de Troyes is the supreme model of the chivalric knight, and the Perceval of the same author is the model of the knight who seeks the Holy Grail, a symbol of divine grace. The Roman de la Rose, a long allegorical poem of the thirteenth century, set out a comprehensive view of courtly love and the chivalric ideal.

Courtly love was a literary and social ideal that emerged in the troubadour poetry of southern France and spread across Europe in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. The doctrine of courtly love — articulated most famously in the treatise of Andreas Capellanus, the De Amore (c. 1180) — prescribed that the lover should serve his lady with devotion, that love should ennoble the lover, and that the relationship should be conducted in a complex ritual of courtship, with the lady in a position of superior dignity. The cult of the Virgin Mary gave the ideal of courtly love a religious dimension, and the lady of the courtly love tradition was often associated with the Madonna of Christian devotion.

The relationship between chivalry and the actual conduct of medieval knights is a matter of much historical debate. The chivalric ideal was a literary and cultural construct, and the actual behavior of medieval knights was often far from the ideal. The brutality of the Crusades, the endemic violence of feudal society, and the routinized exploitation of the peasantry all suggest that the chivalric ideal was, at best, an aspiration that was rarely realized. Yet the ideal was real in its cultural effects, and the literature of chivalry has shaped the Western imagination of knighthood and aristocratic virtue for centuries.

The Music of the High Middle Ages

The music of the High Middle Ages was one of the supreme artistic achievements of the age. The liturgical music of the Church, especially Gregorian chant, was the foundation of the medieval musical tradition, and the development of polyphony — the simultaneous combination of multiple voices — produced some of the most complex and beautiful music of the period.

The Notre-Dame school of Paris in the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries was the center of polyphonic composition. The two great masters of the school — Léonin and Pérotin — composed the Magnus Liber Organi, a collection of organum (a type of early polyphony) for the major feasts of the Church year. Pérotin’s Viderunt omnes and Sederunt principes are among the masterpieces of medieval music. The development of rhythmic notation, attributed to Franco of Cologne in the thirteenth century, made it possible to compose and perform polyphonic music of considerable complexity.

The secular music of the High Middle Ages was also rich and varied. The troubadour and trouvère traditions produced a large repertoire of songs, many of which survive with their melodies. The Minnesänger of Germany composed songs that were often set to original melodies. The instrumental music of the period — played on the vielle, the harp, the psaltery, the lute, the rebec, the bagpipe, the shawm, the trumpet, and the drum — was used for dance, ceremony, and entertainment.

The Visual Arts

The visual arts of the High Middle Ages were dominated by the service of the Church. Illuminated manuscripts, sculpture, stained glass, tapestry, and metalwork were the major art forms of the period, and they were produced by craftsmen who were organized in workshops attached to monasteries, cathedrals, and royal or aristocratic courts.

The illumination of manuscripts was one of the great art forms of the period. The great scriptoria of the early Middle Ages — at Reichenau, St. Gall, Corbie, and Winchester — produced masterpieces of the illuminator’s art. The Romanesque and Gothic periods saw the production of large, elaborate bibles, psalters, books of hours, and missals, with full-page miniatures, decorated initials, and marginalia. The illuminations were not only beautiful; they were also functional, serving to mark the divisions of the text, to identify the various liturgical occasions, and to provide visual representations of the biblical and hagiographic narratives.

The sculpture of the Romanesque period was concentrated on the tympanum and the capital, and it was characterized by its stylization, its monumentality, and its expressive power. The Romanesque Last Judgment tympanum of Autun, sculpted by Gislebertus around 1130, is one of the masterpieces of the period. The Gothic sculpture of the thirteenth century became more naturalistic, with figures that were more lifelike and more emotionally expressive. The statues of the jambs of the great Gothic cathedrals — the figures of kings, queens, saints, and apostles — were often given individual portraits, and the smiling angels of Reims are among the most famous examples of Gothic sculpture.

The stained glass of the Gothic period was one of the supreme achievements of medieval art. The great rose windows of the Notre-Dame de Paris, the Chartres Cathedral, and the Sainte-Chapelle were among the most impressive artistic productions of the period. The stained glass served not only as decoration; it was a means of instruction, telling the stories of the Bible and the lives of the saints, and it was a symbol of the light of divine grace shining into the world.

Conclusion

The cultural and intellectual achievements of the High Middle Ages were among the most remarkable in European history. The Gothic cathedral and the Romanesque church are among the supreme monuments of European architecture. The medieval university is the ancestor of every modern university. The scholastic philosophy of Aquinas and the troubadour poetry of the south of France are among the highest achievements of medieval thought and art. The Arthurian legends, the chansons de geste, and the code of chivalry have shaped the Western imagination of knighthood, heroism, and love for centuries.

The articles that follow examine these themes in greater depth. The pages on architecture, universities, scholasticism, literature, and chivalry provide detailed treatments of the major aspects of medieval cultural and intellectual life.

Sources

Principal sources used in this article:

Charles Haskins, The Renaissance of the Twelfth Century (Harvard, 1927) — for the intellectual chapter; still the framing most working medievalists use.
Erwin Panofsky (ed. and trans.), Abbot Suger on the Abbey Church of St.-Denis and its Art Treasures (Princeton, 1946; 2nd ed. 1979) — the standard edition of the founding text of Gothic art theory.

Further reading:

Jacques Verger, Les Universités au Moyen Âge (PUF, 1973).
Otto von Simson, The Gothic Cathedral: Origins of Gothic Architecture and the Medieval Concept of Order (Princeton, 1956; 3rd ed. 1988).
R. W. Southern, The Making of the Middle Ages (Yale, 1953) — for the intellectual culture that fed scholasticism.

For a recent single-volume synthesis with full scholarly apparatus, see the relevant chapter of Barbara H. Rosenwein, A Short History of the Middle Ages (University of Toronto Press, 2014).