Early Gothic is the term for the first period of Gothic architecture which lasted from the 1130s until about 1200. The early Gothic builders used innovative technologies to resolve the problem of masonry ceilings which were too heavy for the traditional arched barrel vault. The solutions to the problem came in the form of the rib vault, where thin stone ribs passed the weight of the ceiling to rows of columns and outside the walls to another innovation, the flying buttress.
Gothic appeared in the Île-de-France region of France, around Paris, and spread quickly to other regions, and to England and Germany. It combined several existing technologies, notably the rib vault, pointed arch, flying buttress, to build much higher and thinner walls, which allowed more space for stained glass windows and more light in the interior.Encyclopedia Britannica On-Line, "Gothic Architecture" (by subscription), retrieved April 2024
Early examples of Early Gothic include the east end, chapels and ambulatory of the Abbey of Saint Denis in Paris, (1135-1144). The style soon spread from the Paris region to other parts of France, and then to England. Notable examples of early English Gothic include the Trinity Chapel of Canterbury Cathedral, built under the supervision of William of Sens, who had worked on Sens Cathedral, an early example of early French Gothic architecture.
History Early Gothic architecture was the result of the emergence in the 12th century of a powerful French state centered in the Île-de-France. King Louis VI of France (1081–1137), had succeeded, after a long struggle, in bringing the barons of northern France under his control, and successfully defended his domain against attacks by the English king, Henry I of England (1100–1135). Under Louis and his successors, cathedrals were the most visible symbol of the unity of the French church and state. During the reign of Louis VI of France (1081–1137), Paris was the principal residence of the kings of France. During the Carolingian era, Reims Cathedral was the place of coronation, and the Abbey of Saint-Denis became the ceremonial royal burial place. The king and his successors lavishly supported the construction and enlargement of abbeys and cathedrals.
The Abbot of Saint-Denis, Suger, was not only a prominent religious figure but also first minister to Louis VI and Louis VII. He oversaw the royal administration when the king was absent on the Crusades. He commissioned the reconstruction of the Basilica of Saint-Denis, making it the first and most influential example of the new style in France.
Innovations Early Gothic architecture was the solution that the first Gothic builders found to resolve the problem of the earlier Romanesque style; masonry ceilings which were too heavy for the traditional arched barrel vault. The solution to the problem came in the form of the Gothic rib vault, where thin stone ribs spread the weight of the ceiling outward and downwards to flying buttresses.Enclopedia Britannica on-line, "Early Gothic" (by subscription)
Another important innovation of the High Gothic was a change in the interior elevations. As thinner walls were made possible by buttresses, intermediate levels, such as the triforium were gradually made smaller. or eliminated. After 1194, the builders of Chartres Cathedral entirely removed the tribune, making more space for stained glass.Enclopedia Britannica on-line, "Early Gothic" (by subscription).
Stained glass windows were an important feature of early Gothic architecture, and they were significantly larger than those in earlier periods. Their purpose was to fill the church interior with a mystical coloured light, representing the Holy Spirit, and to illustrate Bible stores for the majority of parishioners who could not read. The windows were necessarily small, because, before the invention of the stone ribs of bar tracery, the windows were held together only with thin strips of iron.Brisac, Catherine (1994), "Le Vitrail" (in French), Paris, La Matiniere
Religious and military orders: from the Proto-Gothic to the consolidation of Gothic
Order of Cluny The monastic reform initiated in 909 at Cluny Abbey preceded the emergence of Gothic architecture by more than two centuries, but it laid the institutional foundations—the relationship between the mother house and its daughter houses, together with the liturgical and architectural standardisation between monasteries belonging to the same congregation—that the Cistercian Order would later inherit and radicalise. It was precisely in opposition to Cluniac architectural magnificence, embodied above all in the great abbey church of Cluny III, that Saint Bernard of Clairvaux would define the principles of austerity that came to characterise Cistercian architecture.
Cistercian Order The Cistercian Order was founded in 1098, when a group of monks led by Robert of Molesme left the Benedictine community of Molesme to establish, in an isolated forest within the Diocese of Chalon, the so-called "New Monastery" of Cîteaux. Bernard, born in 1090 into an aristocratic Burgundian family, entered the order only in 1112, during its second generation, and was entrusted the following year with founding its third daughter house, Clairvaux, assuming its leadership only from 1115 onwards—by which time the order had already existed for almost twenty years. It therefore remains debated to what extent the so-called "Bernardine plan" should be attributed to Bernard rather than to the first generation of Cistercians led by Stephen Harding, the third Abbot of Cîteaux. Harding had already defined, through the Carta Caritatis (1113/1114) and the Exordium Parvum, the ideals of poverty and uniformity among the order's houses, though without providing any prescriptions concerning architecture or the visual arts.
It was above all through the Apologia ad Guillelmum Abbatem (1124–1125)—addressed to the Benedictine abbot William of Saint-Thierry and directed, contrary to what older historiography maintained, not only against the Order of Cluny but also against the Cistercian Order itself—that Bernard condemned the use of gold, silver and sculptural or pictorial decoration in monasteries, while not extending this condemnation to urban cathedrals, whose pastoral function among a largely illiterate population justified, in his view, a richer iconographic programme. These ideas were incorporated into the General Chapters of the order before 1134 and reinforced by the Chapter of 1152, which prohibited sculpture, painting and coloured stained glass in Cistercian churches.
From a constructional perspective, the model that spread throughout most Cistercian houses—a Latin-cross plan with projecting transepts and a square-ended chevet without an ambulatory—corresponded to the scheme followed at Clairvaux II (1135–1145), the first Cistercian church with a flat-ended chevet and the one whose influence later gave rise to the designation "Bernardine plan", adopted by scholars such as Karl Heinz Esser and Anselme Dimier. The earliest vaulting employed in Cistercian churches still followed solutions derived from Burgundian Romanesque architecture (pointed barrel vaults), but during the second half of the twelfth century these were progressively replaced by rib vaults, as building campaigns still under way adopted the structural solutions first developed at Saint-Denis. The chevet of Clairvaux itself was rebuilt between 1154 and 1174 with a polygonal ambulatory and radiating chapels (Clairvaux III), a model subsequently adopted by other Cistercian houses, including Pontigny (from 1185) and Longpont and Vaucelles (from 1190).
Despite incorporating Gothic structural solutions—including the rib vault, pointed arch, flying buttress and radiating chevet—the architecture disseminated by the Cistercian Order never corresponded to the cathedral Gothic of northern France, exemplified by Saint-Denis, Notre-Dame de Paris or Notre-Dame de Chartres, since Bernardine principles consistently rejected the decorative splendour characteristic of episcopal and urban Gothic architecture. For this reason, some historians consider it preferable to speak of a "Cistercian aesthetic" or a "Bernardine plan" rather than, strictly speaking, of a unified "Cistercian architecture", since significant regional variations are documented (such as the single nave at Silvanès) and some houses retained the traditional Benedictine plan. Nevertheless, this current of monastic and conventual Gothic—distinct from French episcopal Gothic—would profoundly shape the religious architecture of countries such as Portugal, where cathedral Gothic found comparatively little scope for expansion and where, instead, the austere model promoted by Cîteaux prevailed, the Alcobaça Monastery being its finest example.
The mendicant orders Alongside the Cistercian Order, the mendicant orders—the Franciscans, their female branch, the Poor Clares, and the Dominicans—also played a decisive role in the spread of monastic and conventual Gothic, particularly from the second half of the thirteenth century onwards, when increasing numbers of their convents were erected across Europe. Unlike the Cistercians, who favoured isolated valleys away from urban centres, the mendicant orders shifted the focus of religious life into the cities, settling close to the populations to whom they devoted their preaching. Their churches reflect this pastoral mission: they are generally more austere and economically more modest than the great Cistercian or Benedictine abbeys, usually consisting of a single nave roofed with timber, with vaulting reserved only for the chancel and apse chapels, thereby dispensing with the flying buttress system characteristic of the great cathedrals.
The military orders The military orders—born from the fusion of the monastic ideal with the military vocation in the context of the Crusades and the Reconquista—constitute a third architectural current within Gothic, distinct from both the urban cathedral model and the Cistercian and mendicant traditions. The Knights Templar and the Knights Hospitaller, founded in the aftermath of the First Crusade, developed distinctive architectural typologies, notably centrally planned or polygonal churches inspired by eastern models and associated with the memory of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. In the Iberian context, this tradition continued through the military orders established during the Reconquista—the Order of Aviz, the Order of Santiago and, above all, the Order of Christ, which inherited the Templars' possessions in Portugal. The Convent of Christ at Tomar, with its centrally planned charola, is the foremost example of this architectural tradition in Portuguese territory.
Classification of periods In the classification of architecture periods, Early Gothic raises certain issues. Early Gothic is defined as a style that used some principle elements of Gothic, but not all. Especially, it had no fine tracery. It marks the first phase of a division of Gothic style into three periods. If it is used for all countries, it has to be regarded that there may be special terms for the styles of single countries, such as Early English in England.
In France, where Gothic style began, another phasing has been established: Gothique primitif (Primary Gothic) or Gothique premier (First Gothic), from short before 1140 until short after 1180, marked by tribunes above the aisles of basilicas. Gothique classique (Classic Gothic), from the 1180s to the first third of 13th century, marked by basilicas without lateral tribunes and with triforia without windows. Some buildings of this phase, like Chartres Cathedral, have to be subsumed to Early Gothic, others, like the Reims Cathedral and the western parts of Amiens Cathedral, have to be subsumed to High Gothic.