A History of the Crusades-Vol 3 (50 page)

The Church of the Holy Sepulchre was the
only older shrine to which the Crusaders made extensive alterations. They
repaired several small chapels, such as that of the Ascension on the Mount of
Olives and the tomb of the Virgin at Gethsemane. To the Dome of the Rock, when
it became the church of the Templars, they only added decorative marble and
iron-work, and the Mosque al-Aqsa was equally untouched, though the foundations
were reconditioned to provide stables and store-rooms, and buildings were set
up round the mosque to house the Order, while a wing added on the south-west
became the favourite residence of the Kings. In most of the towns that they
colonized they found churches too badly ruined to be worth repair or else they
left them to the indigenous sects that were already in possession. They took
over some older monasteries, but on the whole preferred to erect their own
buildings. Sometimes they used previous sites and foundations, as with the
basilica of Mount Sion; sometimes they slightly changed the orientation of the
older site, as with the church at Gethsemane. More often they chose their own
sites, or completely rebuilt churches on traditional sites.

Apart from the Templars’ churches, which
were circular in shape, the invariable design for a small chapel was a
rectangle, with an apse, sometimes included in the outer wall, at the east end.
The masonry was solid. A single vault, pointed and cross-ribbed, supported a
flat stone roof. Such chapels were built in every castle, even in such desolate
fortresses as that on the hill of the Wueira, by the ruins of ancient Petra.
Larger churches also were rectangular, with side-aisles running the length of
the building, separated from the nave by pillars or piers. There were almost
always three apses, usually hidden from the outside in the thickness of the
wall. The great Cathedral at Tyre and one or two other churches had short
transepts, which made the floor-plan cruciform but had no structural
significance. The Cathedral at Tortosa has a diaconicon and a prothesis built
out at the south-east and northeast corners. A few churches, such as Saint Anne’s
at Jerusalem, and, apparently, the Cathedral at Caesarea, had domes on
pendentives over the space before the sanctuary; but the roof was usually flat
or barrel-shaped. The side aisles were almost invariably covered by groined
vaults. The nave had either a groined vault or one long pointed and ribbed
barrel-vault. When the aisles were lower than the rest of the church, there
would be windows along the clerestory. Windows, even those at the east end,
were small, to keep out the fierce Syrian sunlight. With very few exceptions
arches were pointed. Towers were rare. The abbey-church on Mount Thabor had two
towers, one on either side of the west entrance, each containing a small apsed
chapel at ground level. Belfry towers were sometimes attached to the church,
but never as an integral part.

Church Decoration

The decoration of the twelfth-century churches
was simple. Columns from ancient buildings were often used. The capitals
varied. Some were ancient, some copied from the Byzantine and Arab styles of
Corinthian and basket-work, made perhaps by native masons or by Franks who had
noticed local designs, and some in the Western Romanesque style. Some churches,
such as that at Qariat el-Enab, had frescoes in the Byzantine style, and there
were mosaics in the Cenacle on Mount Sion and in the chapel of the Dormition
next to it. Byzantine artists may have worked there, as they certainly did at
the Nativity at Bethlehem, sent there by the Emperor Manuel along with their
materials. But pictorial ornament was rare. Carved decorations round the arches
were usually chevron or dog-tooth. Very little figure sculpture has survived.
The voussoirs of the arches were often cushioned. Another favourite decoration
was a simple rosette.

The general effect of the twelfth-century
churches was somewhat heavy, almost squat in comparison with contemporary work
in the West. This was due to the need to avoid the use of wood and to guard
against earthquake; but the result was usually well-proportioned. The Crusaders
undoubtedly brought with them their architects, who were imbued in the styles
of France, particularly of Provence and the Toulousain, but they clearly took
the advice of local builders. Their use of pointed arches was learned in the
East. The first known examples in the West are in two churches built about the
year 1115 by Ida of Lorraine, the mother of the first two Frankish rulers of
Jerusalem. Her eldest son, Eustace of Boulogne, had recently returned from
Palestine. It is difficult not to believe that returning architects popularized
the new device in the West, where it was developed to suit local structural
needs.

It is impossible to make generalizations
about the origins of the various architectural and ornamental detail. The dome
of Saint Anne’s at Jerusalem closely resembles the domes that French architects
built in Perigord; but the same type of dome, built on pendentives without a
drum, could be found in the East. Romanesque carving is so often akin to
Byzantine and Armenian carving that clear distinctions cannot easily be made.
It is probable that figure-carvings and the more fantastic capitals were the
work of Frankish artists, but the traditional designs of the acanthus or the
vine-leaf were provided locally. The chevron pattern seems to have travelled
southward, even in Europe, from the north; but the dog-tooth was already known
in the East. It appears, as does the cushioned voussoir, on the great Fatimid
gate, the Bab al-Futuh, at Cairo, which was itself built by Armenian architects
from Edessa, a city where the Byzantines had a few decades previously been
responsible for much new building.

Mosaics and Frescoes

In the pictorial arts the surviving
examples show so strong a Byzantine influence that it seems doubtful whether
any Frankish artist worked in the East. The mosaics at Bethlehem were certainly
designed and erected by artists from Constantinople, whose names were Basil and
Ephrem, though they worked in co-operation with the local Latin authorities.
Western as well as Eastern saints are depicted and the inscriptions are in
Latin as well as in Greek. The mosaic Christ in the Latin chapel at Calvary is
probably their work. The rapidly perishing frescoes at Qariat el-Enab are
Byzantine in style, but while the choice of subjects is Eastern, the
inscriptions are Latin. There were certainly Greek artists working in Palestine
in about 1170 under the Emperor Manuel’s patronage, who were responsible for
frescoes at the Orthodox monasteries of Calamon and St Euthymius. No doubt the
Latin fathers at Qariat engaged them to decorate their church. The little
church at Amioun, not far from Tripoli, is sometimes taken from its
architecture to be a Crusader monument; but its dedication to a Greek saint,
Phocas, its Greek inscriptions and its Byzantine frescoes show it to have
always been an Orthodox shrine. It illustrates the difficulty of a sharp
differentiation between local and Frankish styles. Many Frankish churches
profited from gifts obtained by their prelates from the Emperor at
Constantinople. The great Archbishop William of Tyre tells us that he was given
sumptuous presents for his Cathedral by the Emperor Manuel; and the corpse of
Bishop Achard of Nazareth, who visited the Imperial city to negotiate Baldwin
III’s marriage and died there, came back equally well laden. Throughout the
twelfth century, particularly in the time of Manuel, there was frequent
intercourse between Outremer and Byzantium, and the Byzantine artistic
influence must have been great. It lingered on into the next century. The
description given by Wilbrand of Oldenburg of the palace of the Ibelins at
Beirut, with its mosaic and its marbles, suggests Byzantine work. The Old Lord,
John of Ibelin, who built it, was the son of a Byzantine Princess.

The palace at Beirut was an exception. The
thirteenth-century architecture in Outremer kept closer than the
twelfth-century to French traditions. With the restriction of Frankish
territory to little more than the coastal cities, native workmen and native
traditions seem to have played a smaller part. The last important church to be
finished before Saladin’s conquests was the Cathedral of the Annunciation at
Nazareth. The building was destroyed by Baibars, but the remarkable
figure-sculpture that remains is purely French. The great doorway that most of
them adorned appears to have closely resembled those of many of the French
cathedrals of the time, and the whole building was probably nearer to the
French than the previous local style. The chief church to be built in the
thirteenth century, that of Saint Andrew at Acre, was a tall and graceful
Gothic building. Few traces of it now remain, but the descriptions and drawings
of earlier travellers all emphasize its height. Its side-aisles were tall and
lit by long, narrow, acutely pointed windows, with a delicate blind arcade
running round the outside walls beneath them. We cannot tell how the clerestory
or the east end were lit, but over the west door there were three larger
windows, and above them three in the form of an mil
de boeuf
All that
now survives of the church is a porch, probably from the west end, which was
carried on camel-back to Cairo after the conquest of Acre and set up as an
entry to the mosque built in memory of the conquering Sultan, al-Ashraf. Its
proportions are tall and delicate. A series of three slender pilasters
alternating with two even more slender carries the curve of the arch on each
side, and the moulding of the curve corresponds to the pilasters. In the space
of the arch there is a trefoil arch, pierced by an
oeil de boeuf.
The
style is the early Gothic of the south of France.

The Psalter of Queen Melisende

The thirteenth-century work at Krak des
Chevaliers shows the same taste for greater height. The Grand Master’s airy
chamber and the great banqueting hall are both entirely Western in spirit. The
latter has a porch whose proportions are very similar to that of Saint Andrew
at Acre, though its pilasters are less delicate; but it had an elaborate
rose-window in the centre of the arch, where Saint Andrew had an o
eil
de boeuf.

There are unfortunately very few monuments
of the thirteenth century left; but in general the style of Outremer was coming
close to the contemporary French Gothic style of Lusignan Cyprus and had moved
away from the more indigenous style of the previous century. The surviving work
at Nazareth suggests that Crusader art was keeping in touch with the Gothic
movement in the West. Saladin’s conquests induced many native craftsmen to
throw in their lot with the Moslems. The collapse of Byzantium at the turn of
the century inevitably diminished Byzantine influences; and the Third Crusade
brought many more Western artists and workmen to the East. At the same time the
growing hostility between the Latin and Orthodox churches probably inspired a sharper
distinction between their styles.

Only one twelfth-century illuminated
manuscript exists which is known to come from Outremer. This is the Psalter
known as that of Queen Melisende. It certainly belonged to a woman, and as it
mentions the deaths of Baldwin II and of Queen Morphia, but not that of King
Fulk, it has been assumed to have belonged to Melisende and to have been
written before Fulk’s death. It might, however, equally well have been made for
Melisende’s sister, Joveta, Abbess of Bethany; and in that case, as any mention
of Fulk would have been irrelevant, it could date from any year during Joveta’s
lifetime, that is to say, till about 1180. The text was written by an
accomplished Latin scribe and the decorative headpieces seem Latin rather than
Byzantine, but the full-page illustrations are Byzantine, in the style of the
eastern provinces of the Empire. The signature of a painter called Basil
appears; and it is possible that this was the same Basil who was responsible
for some of the mosaics at Bethlehem in 1169. The pictures have some
resemblance to those in a lectionary in Syria decorated by Joseph of Melitene
in the time of a Bishop John, who has been identified with the Bishop that
reigned there from 1193 to 1220. It is possible therefore that the artist of
the Melisende Psalter was a Syrian trained in a Byzantine school, and it is
probable that the work was made for the Abbess Joveta towards the end of her
long life.

There is an interesting series of
manuscripts, usually considered to be Sicilian work, which modern research
proves to have been written at Acre about the time of Saint Louis’s sojourn
there, from 1250 to 1254. They are markedly Byzantine in style. Louis had made
extensive purchases from the Emperor Baldwin II of Constantinople, and it may
be that amongst the objects that he acquired were manuscripts which were sent
to him at Acre and inspired the artists working there. It is impossible to say
whether the school outlasted the King’s return to France.

Minor Arts

Of the minor arts very little has been
preserved; and it is impossible to tell what was made locally and what was
imported from the East or from the West. Furniture and objects of daily use
came no doubt from workshops on the spot, but most ornamental goods probably
came from abroad, from Constantinople or the great Moslem cities, or were
brought by visitors from France or Italy. A collection of objects found in the
nineteenth century in the foundations of the monastic buildings at Bethlehem
included two brass basins which seem to belong to the Mosane school of the
twelfth century and which are engraved with a series of pictures illustrating
the life of Saint Thomas the Apostle, a pair of silver candlesticks which seem
to be Byzantine work of the late twelfth century, another pair of candlesticks
of Limoges enamel of the late twelfth century, and a larger candlestick and a
crozier-head of Limoges enamel of the thirteenth century. The iron grill set up
by the Crusaders in the Dome of the Rock may be local work but strongly resembles
the Romanesque iron work of France.