Becket's Crown: Art and Imagination in Gothic England 1170-1300 (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: Becket's Crown: Art and Imagination in Gothic England 1170-1300 Julian Gardner Becket's Crown: Art and Imagination in Gothic England 1170-1300. By Paul Binski. (New Haven: Yale University Press. 2005. Pp. xvi, 343; 80 colored and 210 black and white illustrations. $65.00.) This is an intensely serious and ambitious book which sheds much light on English art in its European context over a period which might be characterized as the long thirteenth century. It is beautifully produced with well-chosen and apposite illustrations close to the text in which they are discussed. Binski claims with complete justification that he has consistently attempted to alert the reader to the sustained exegetical and textual density of English Gothic, its ethical sophistication, its urbanity and unconventionality, and its prizing of stylistic virtuosity. Similar epithets might be applied to the book. It is skillfully written; it glitters with brilliant aperçus; and it can be witty as well as serious. At times the writing is a trifle ornate, and the reader who encounters an obvious synechdochal train of thought about Becket's wounded head is in for an occasionally bumpy ride. But the consistent intellectual seriousness and the close engagement with the theological and liturgical context is very welcome. The book is articulated in parts. The first concerns Becket and the architectural and ideological consequences of his brutal murder. After the new work at Canterbury the cathedrals of Lincoln and Salisbury are examined in detail. The second section scrutinizes the solutions arrived at in Ely and Wells and the pervasive impact on the English episcopate of Becket's martyrdom in all its complexity. The physical and ideological context established, Binski examines the way in which religious life and its setting was regulated, externally through the legislation of the Fourth Lateran council, and internally through synodalia and the growing genre of pastoralia. The final focus is on the expressive range of English Gothic, its ability to smile and grimace, and the centrally formative role of music in imagery and spatial organization. This impressively wide sweep allows the author to discuss such topics as the development of the three-nail crucifix, vernacular devotion, and much else. Binski is unafraid to take up the cudgels when he feels it necessary, and his reasoned disagreements with scholars such as Panofsky, Southern, Belting, and Wolfgang Kemp are invariably cogent. Canterbury was the seminal building in its architecture, its symbolism, and its martyrial coloration. Its range of reference was huge, stretching from late antique imperial mausolea and mediaeval Roman spolia to Saint-Denis. The ethical charge of the new episcopal initiatives was great and markedly [End Page 392] Aristotelian. Of supreme importance was Archbishop Stephen Langton, like Becket exiled, and a close associate and collaborator of Pope Innocent III. Lincoln, Ely, and Wells cathedrals are all carefully scrutinized and an impressive range of tools brought to the analysis, stylistic, liturgical, botanical, and musical. Binski draws suggestive analogies between the foliate borders of the Benedictional of St. Ethelwold, the flowering Cross of the Psalter of Robert of Lindsey, and the celebrated capitals of Southwell chapterhouse, although the apse mosaic of San Clemente might also have figured in this argument. He makes penetrating comments on holy bishops and their role in the transformation of English Gothic architecture. His ascription of a highly significant influence to St. Bernard and the Cistercians might have been tempered had he read Donald Matthew's measured criticisms of Conrad Rudolph's hypotheses, and Marc Dykmans would have rounded out his arguments on the elevation of the Host, but it is difficult to fault the range and alertness of his reading. Bishops were expected after the Fourth Lateran Council to be controls, and as such were naturally concerned with ornamenta. Binski here makes a fundamental contribution to this discussion, rightly stressing the English contribution, for which he draws splendidly on a published documentation unrivaled elsewhere in Europe. He makes extensive and sensitive use of synodalia. Not everyone will follow him in claiming a pioneering role for Becket in the development of the Vita-retable, but the arguments are certainly suggestive. The virtually total destruction of early mendicant painting in England and France...