Early Medieval Architecture

Drawing on new work published over the past twenty years, the author offers a history of building in Western Europe from 300 to 1200. Medieval castles, church spires, and monastic cloisters are just some of the areas covered.

At last available in English, this classic text was originally published in Germany in 1951 and has been continuously in print since then. Gunter Bandmann analyzes the architecture of societies in western Europe up to the twelfth century that aspired to be the heirs to the Roman Empire. He examines the occurrence and recurrence of basic forms not as stylistic evolutions but as meaningful expressions of meta-material content and develops an architectural iconography of symbolic, historical, and aesthetic elements.

In analyzing the early medieval architecture of Christian and Islamic Spain, Jerrilynn Dodds explores the principles of artistic response to social and cultural tension, offering an account of that unique artistic experience that set Spain apart from the rest of Europe and established a visual identity born of the confrontation of cultures that perceived one another as alien. Architecture and Ideology in Early Medieval Spain covers the Spanish medieval experience from the Visigothic oligarchy to the year 1000, addressing a variety of cases of cultural interchange. It examines the embattled reactive stance of Hispano-Romans to their Visigothic rulers and the Asturian search for a new language of forms to support a political position dissociated from the struggles of a peninsula caught in the grip of a foreign and infidel rule. Dodds then examines the symbolic meaning of the Mozarabic churches of the tenth century and their reflection of the Mozarabs' threatened cultural identity. The final chapter focuses on two cases of artistic interchange between Islamic and Christian builders with a view toward understanding the dynamics of such interchange between conflicting cultures. Dodds concludes with a short account of the beginning of Romanesque architecture in Spain and an analysis of some of the ways in which artistic expression can reveal the subconscious of a culture.

This is the first book devoted to churches in Ireland dating from the arrival of Christianity in the fifth century to the early stages of the Romanesque around 1100, including those built to house treasures of the golden age of Irish art, such as the Book of Kells and the Ardagh chalice. � Carrag�in's comprehensive survey of the surviving examples forms the basis for a far-reaching analysis of why these buildings looked as they did, and what they meant in the context of early Irish society. � Carrag�in also identifies a clear political and ideological context for the first Romanesque churches in Ireland and shows that, to a considerable extent, the Irish Romanesque represents the perpetuation of a long-established architectural tradition.

This book is the first devoted to the important innovations in architecture that took place in western Europe between the death of emperor Justinian in A.D. 565 and the tenth century. During this period of transition from Late Antiquity to the Middle Ages, the Early Christian basilica was transformed in both form and function.Charles B. McClendon draws on rich documentary evidence and archaeological data to show that the buildings of these three centuries, studied in isolation but rarely together, set substantial precedents for the future of medieval architecture. He looks at buildings of the so-called Dark Ages—monuments that reflected a new assimilation of seemingly antithetical “barbarian” and “classical” attitudes toward architecture and its decoration—and at the grand and innovative architecture of the Carolingian Empire. The great Romanesque and Gothic churches of subsequent centuries owe far more to the architectural achievements of the Early Middle Ages than has generally been recognized, the author argues.

Medieval architecture comprises much more than the traditional image of Gothic cathedrals and the castles of chivalry. A great variety of buildings--synagogues, halls, and barns--testify to the diverse communities and interests in western Europe in the centuries between 1150 and 1550. This book looks at their architecture from an entirely fresh perspective, shifting the emphasis away from such areas as France towards the creativity of other regions, including central Europe and Spain. Treating the subject thematically, Coldstream seeks out what all buildings, both religious and secular, have in common, and how they reflect the material and spiritual concerns of the people who built and used them. Furthermore, the author considers how and why, after four centuries of shaping the landscapes and urban patterns of Europe, medieval styles were superseded by classicism.