The Cathedral: The Social and Architectural Dynamics of Construction by Alain Erlande-Brandenburg

Abstract

684BOOK REVIEWS been crucified. ReUcs of St.VitaUs, the servant ofAgrícola, must have been taken to MUan. These reUcs are precisely relevant for the cult of the same martyr in Ravenna and Rome. St. VitaUs of Ravenna, to whom the famous most beautiful basUica is dedicated, as independent miUtary officer of MUan (not of Bologna), is evidently a forged personality, created by the Ravennate sixth-century legend falsely attributed to Ambrose (BHL, I, p. 524, n. 3514). This Passio S. VitaUs and Passio SS. Gervasii etProtasii claiming to be a MUanese text makes Ravenna independent from Bologna. But at the beginning, Ui the fifth century, the Ravennate original cult of the Bolognese martyr must have been brought from MUan to Ravenna by the Imperial court; Honorius, GaUa Placidia, St. Peter Chrysologus . Pope Innocent I (401-417) had been exUed in Ravenna for a long period (KeUy, Popes, pp. 37-38); back in Rome he dedicated to the Saints of MUanRavenna (Gervasius, Protasius, andVitaUs) the Titulus Vestinae (LP, Duchesne, I, 220-224; R. Krautheimer, Corpus, IV, 299-316, [Citta delVaticano 1976]). This information must be added to the present volume which ties itself exclusively to the Bologna-Florence-MUan relationship. Somewhere a supplement is needed. Giovanni Montanari Archives oftheArchdiocese ofRavenna-Cervia Medieval The Cathedral: The Social and Architectural Dynamics of Construction. By Alain Erlande-Brandenburg. Translated by Martin Thorn. (New York: Cambridge University Press. 1994. Pp. xxii, 378; 161 black-and-white Ulustrations . $89.95.) This is the translation of a book simply titled La cathédrale, pubUshed in 1989; a more accurate subtitle would have been "The Development of Urban Episcopal BuUdings Ui France from the Fourth through the Fifteenth Centuries." The introduction traces the creation of a "mythical" cathedral Ui some writings and architectural practice of die nineteenth century, to which the author opposes his own account ofthe cathedral's "real nature."The mythical cathedral is Gothic, a majesticaUy unitary structure that symboUzed the coUaborative endeavor of an idealized society, "French unity" according toVioUet-le-Duc (p. 1 1); the real cathedral is a complex of functionaUy interdependent buUdings which originated Ui the Roman cities of late antiquity, when it comprised one or two basUicas, a baptistery, the bishop's residence, and a hospice. Its origin conditioned the Gothic outcome; thus to know this real cathedral "we must consider it in a long-term perspective, beginning with . . . the estabUshment ofepiscopal sees In the ancient cities . . . scrutinis[ing] each of the great periods which foUowed, emphasizing whatever was original in its particular contribution" (p. 26). Accordingly, the book is organized at first Ui chronologicaUy successive BOOK REVIEWS685 chapters: "the bishop in the city" (late antiquity),"the Imperial dream" (Carolingian reforms), "the Gregorian reform," and then, foUowing "Gothic construction ," in topical chapters treating "men, finance and administration," the internal functional divisions of the cathedral proper, the palace, canons' quarters, and the "hôtel-Dieu." BrutaUy reduced, the thesis is that the cathedral was a major urban agglomeration, a city within the city, whose configuration was Ui continual revision to accommodate changing functions and personnel. Thus canons' cloisters and schools were added under the Carolingians; Ui the eleventh and twelfth centuries baptisteries and second basUicas were altered or suppressed whUe die remaining basilica was enormously enlarged, the bishop's domus became a stone "palace," and the canons' quarters also were aggrandized. In the Gothic phase the cathedral proper was again rebuUt on a gigantic scale; the bishop's palace and the canonry were made concomitantly grander and more luxurious, and were often fortified; and the hospitals also were enlarged and sometimes relocated. The simultaneous expansion of aU components of the cathedral complex sometimes brought them—and theU constituencies—into conflict, and the complex as a whole increasingly encroached upon the town. While the designs of some cathedrals might accommodate existing municipal features—streets, defensive waUs, private housing—over time cathedrals were space-aggressive, and tended rather to engulf or suppress them. The original French pubUcation was reviewed by Francis Salet, to whom the book is also dedicated, in the Bulletin monumental (CL-CLI [1992], 186-188). Salet praised it for providing a synthetic overview of a topic that had previously been...