DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.6914#0106
74
ARCHITECTURAL ANTIQUITIES.
mankind in every age and country have been in the habit of reviving, or repeating
the works and inventions of former ages and of distant countries.
The opinions and comments of such a writer as Mr. R. P. Knight are entitled
to attention and respect. On the subject now under review, he says, " That style
of architecture, which we call Cathedral, or monastic Gothic, is manifestly a cor-
ruption of the sacred architecture of the Greeks and Romans, by a mixture of the
Moorish or Saracenesque, which is formed out of a combination of the Egyptian,
Persian, and Hindoo. It may easily be traced through all its variations, from the
Church of Santa Sophia, at Constantinople, and the Cathedral of Montreale, near
Palermo, the one of the sixth, and the other of the eighth century, down to King's
Chapel, at Cambridge, the last and most perfect of this kind of buildings ; and to
trace it accurately would be a most curious and interesting work. The oriental
style of building, with columns extravagantly slender and high, was well known
to the Romans, as appears from the grotesque paintings found in Herculaneum and
Pompeii, which have, in many instances, a near resemblance, in their proportions,
decorations, and distribution, with those executed in the semi-gothic Church of
Montreale. The fasciculated columns are ^Egyptian and Persian; as appears from
the ruins of Thebes and Persepolis, published by Norden, Denon, Niebuhr, Le
Bruyne, &c. ; and the low proportions of them in those buildings which we call
Saxon, are evidently ^Egyptian, and were probably brought into Europe by the
Saracens, they being precisely the same in many of our old cathedrals, as they are
in the Turkish mosques. The Pointed arch, which we call Gothic, is the primitive
arch ; of which, the earliest instance known in Europe, is the Emissarius of the
lake of Albano, built during the siege of Veii, long before either the Greeks or
Romans knew how to turn any other kind of arch : for as this may be constructed
without a centre, by advancing the stones in gradual projections over each other,
and then cutting off the projecting angles, its invention was obvious, and natu-
rally preceded those constructed upon mechanical principles ; of which, I believe,
there are no examples anterior to the Macedonian Conquest.13 The ornaments of
this monastic Gothic consist of indiscriminate imitations of almost every kind of
13 " The gates of Psestum and the Cloaca maxima of Rome, said to have been built by the first
Tarquin, may seem exceptions; but the gates now remaining are probably those of the Roman colony,
not of the old Greek city Posidonia; and the Cloaca may have been altered or rebuilt more than once in
later times."
ARCHITECTURAL ANTIQUITIES.
mankind in every age and country have been in the habit of reviving, or repeating
the works and inventions of former ages and of distant countries.
The opinions and comments of such a writer as Mr. R. P. Knight are entitled
to attention and respect. On the subject now under review, he says, " That style
of architecture, which we call Cathedral, or monastic Gothic, is manifestly a cor-
ruption of the sacred architecture of the Greeks and Romans, by a mixture of the
Moorish or Saracenesque, which is formed out of a combination of the Egyptian,
Persian, and Hindoo. It may easily be traced through all its variations, from the
Church of Santa Sophia, at Constantinople, and the Cathedral of Montreale, near
Palermo, the one of the sixth, and the other of the eighth century, down to King's
Chapel, at Cambridge, the last and most perfect of this kind of buildings ; and to
trace it accurately would be a most curious and interesting work. The oriental
style of building, with columns extravagantly slender and high, was well known
to the Romans, as appears from the grotesque paintings found in Herculaneum and
Pompeii, which have, in many instances, a near resemblance, in their proportions,
decorations, and distribution, with those executed in the semi-gothic Church of
Montreale. The fasciculated columns are ^Egyptian and Persian; as appears from
the ruins of Thebes and Persepolis, published by Norden, Denon, Niebuhr, Le
Bruyne, &c. ; and the low proportions of them in those buildings which we call
Saxon, are evidently ^Egyptian, and were probably brought into Europe by the
Saracens, they being precisely the same in many of our old cathedrals, as they are
in the Turkish mosques. The Pointed arch, which we call Gothic, is the primitive
arch ; of which, the earliest instance known in Europe, is the Emissarius of the
lake of Albano, built during the siege of Veii, long before either the Greeks or
Romans knew how to turn any other kind of arch : for as this may be constructed
without a centre, by advancing the stones in gradual projections over each other,
and then cutting off the projecting angles, its invention was obvious, and natu-
rally preceded those constructed upon mechanical principles ; of which, I believe,
there are no examples anterior to the Macedonian Conquest.13 The ornaments of
this monastic Gothic consist of indiscriminate imitations of almost every kind of
13 " The gates of Psestum and the Cloaca maxima of Rome, said to have been built by the first
Tarquin, may seem exceptions; but the gates now remaining are probably those of the Roman colony,
not of the old Greek city Posidonia; and the Cloaca may have been altered or rebuilt more than once in
later times."