The Transformations in the 11th Century: Crusading, the Benedictine Monastery, and Gothic Cathedral Building and Art as the Accumulation of Aristocratic Privilege and Feudalism
In the late Middle Ages we find specialization of trades and artisans emerging in European cities. We also find a greater concentration of land ownership by the aristocracy and clergy. This expansion of art with its trades and techniques arose out of and moved beyond the monastery complexes that were a dominant architectural form from the 5th through 10th centuries. From the 11th century onward, Europeans sought greater access to the Eastern European and Mediterranean based trade and commerce. The Crusades against the Islamic states of the Near East and Spain, and against pagan regions of Northern Europe and Russia were products of an inferior trade position that relied upon an ideological religious crusade to mobilze a profit seeking military aristocracy in alliance with the clergy. The accumulation of wealth among this aristocracy and clergy rested on their ability to disenfranchise and dislocate peasants from land based rights privileges during the late phases of the 10th century and during this period. While peasants were not passive and would at various times rebel against this encroachment, the trend toward lordship and prominent clerical estates as major landowners in Europe became the major force of accrual of wealth and prestige in late Medieval and early modern Europe. For recent surveys of this trend toward peasant dislocation and the rise of the aristocratic court, military orders and clergy, see Chris Wickham, The Formation of the Early Middle Ages (Oxford, 2005), and The Inheritance of Rome: Illuminating the Dark Ages 400-1000 (Viking, 2009), and M. McCormick, The Origins of the European Economy (Oxford, 2001).
The form of the monastery allows insight into early accumulation by clergy and state in the early Middle Ages. That the monastery lasted as an ideological and economic center of land ownership, production until the 16th century is indicative of the clergy's ability to adapt to the rise of the secular or diocesan clergy that became more predominant from the 11th century onward. The main form of the late medieval monastery as found in France and Ireland during this period included quarters for lay monks, those who were not required to become fully practicing spiritual monks, but who instead were expected to be agrarian based producers who worked the fields and manned the labor required for the monastic complex. See, the comparative discussion by Edwin C. Rae, "Architecture and Sculpture, 1169-1603," in Art Cosgrove, ed., A New History of Ireland: Medieval Ireland 1160-1534, Vol. 2, (Oxford, 2005) pp 737-777.
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Fig. 1. William Cooper, Ground Plan of Knockmoy Abbey, (1784). This Cistercian Abbey was founded in 1190, during the Anglo-Norman period in County Galway. The Nave of the Church is shown to the North or on the left with the presbytery or altar area at the top. The cloister is in the center. Source National Library of Ireland.
This growth in ecclesiastical architecture was accompanied by the growth of coinage and minting. See, Peter Spufford, Money and Its Uses in Medieval Europe (Cambridge, 1988). In the East the construction of Novgorod's Cathedral of Saint Sophia borrowed stylistic elements from Western Romanesque forms and the Byzantine dome and decoration. Novgorod's cathedral represented the place of the city as a nexus of long distrance trade routes that connected Novgorod to the Baltic and ultimately to English merchants, and the Black Sea and Constantinople to the South, and to Kiev. By 1200 Novgorod and Kiev had populations that rivaled or surpassed London. (Platt, Marks of Opulence)
Late 11th century Norman expansion into the Arab held areas of Southern Italy and Sicily afforded the Abbot Desiderius to begin new church building on a grand scale that later influenced cathedral building at Cluny in France. Among Desiderius' projects was the Cathedral at Salerno (Duomo di Salerno) that combined features of Arabic and Norman architecture. Desiderius' promotion to the papacy as Pope Victor II was at the whim and favor of the new Norman occupiers of Italy and Sicily, who also supported his successor Pope Urban II proclamation of the First Crusade from the pulpit at Clermont on Nov. 27, 1095. Perhaps no structure reflects the complicity of the Norman conquest of Arab Sicily than the new cathedral at Monreale, near Palermo. It was built at the bequest of the Norman king, William II (r. 1165-89) who reputedly spoke Arabic (See Platt, p. 9, citing Ibn Jubayr). The cathedral's integration of Romanesque ground plan, with Greek or Byzantine mosaic designs and interior elements of Arabic Islamic influence attest to the fusions of styles that raise questions for art historians about the choice to conduct an empire as mere conquest or as assimilation of elites to local conditions and populations. Further, William II's marriage to Joana of England suggested the Norman need to consolidate their widespread holdings that had only been occupied within the past century.
Figure 2. The Cloister at the Cathedral of Monreale in Sicily. Note the composite influences of Arab, Byzantine and Norman design in the archways, capitals and inlaid mosaic decor.
The new clerical orders were one of the instruments of Norman expansion. As the Normans were too diffuse and few in number to conduct direct colonization, they encouraged and benefited form the zeal of followers of Bernard of Clairvaux and his strict Cisterican order of monks. As is apparent from the example of Knockmoy in the far west of Ireland, these newly created orders of monks could be used as ideological extensions into new lands. When Bernard of Clairvaux created his new order of monks he distanced himself from what he considered the excesses of the Benedictine monasteries as at Cluny, whose sculptural decor and lavish wealth he criticised. With the Anglo-Norman occupation of Eastern Ireland the lack of settlers required the reliance on these new monastic orders to settle areas in the outlying areas of Ireland. Thus where Anglo-Norman military power could not reach, the Normans founded 10 separate monasteries after their invasion of 1169. Knockmoy in the far West was founded in 1190, while the largest and last of the Cisterican abbeys, Graiguenamanagh was built in 1202. Significantly it began to enclose serfs and tenant peasants in a trend that broke with Bernard of Clairvaux' decree that monasteries should be self-sufficient. Graiguenamanagh represented the acceptance of the feudal land system and arrangment between the clergy and the Norman aristocracy, in patterns already far advanced in France, Germany and England. Indeed, Bernard of Clairvaux' own pronouncement in favor of crusading and the creation of a military order of monks was convenient to Norman and other late Medieval aristocratic aims at profiteering from expansionary military campaigns.
Consider the complex melange and meaning of the inscription of the tombstone below in the link to Figure 3.
from the Museum with No Frontiers website. This marble and semi-precious inlaid plaque dated to 1149 AD in the Norman period marked the death of Anna, mother to prominent priest to the Norman King Roger and is inscribed in Arabic, Hebrew, Greek and Latin. Does it suggest a relatively peaceful coexistence or cosmopolitan relation between the faiths for the mid-12th century?
Figure 3. Tombstone from Zisa Museum. 1149 AD.
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