Early Medieval Architecture (Oxford
History of Art) by Roger Stalley
Flagship Volume In New Art History Series
The early middle ages were an exciting period in the history of European
architecture, culminating in the development of the Romanesque style.
Major architectural innovations were made during this time including the
medieval castle, the church spire, and the monastic cloister. By avoiding
the traditional emphasis on chronological development, Roger Stalley
provides a radically new approach to the subject, exploring issues and
themes rather than sequences and dates. In addition to analysing the
language of the Romanesque, the book examines the engineering
achievements of the builders, and clearly how the great monuments of the
age were designed and constructed. Ranging from Gotland to Apulia, the
richness and variety of European architecture is explored in terms of the
social and religious aspirations of the time. Symbolic meanings associated
with architecture are also thoroughly investigated. Written with style and
humour, the lively text includes many quotations from ancient sources,
providing a fascinating insight into the way that medieval buildings were
created, and in the process enlivening study of this period.

Personal Review: Early Medieval Architecture (Oxford History of
Art) by Roger Stalley
Published last year, this is one of the initial volumes to appear in the
extremely good, new "Oxford History of Art" series, which almost outdoes
even the recent "Everyman Art Library", which it resembles. Both series
are an attempt to make available up-to-the-moment overviews of selected
areas of the history of building, sculpture, painting, and photography.
Whereas the Everyman series seems to be open-ended, Oxford have
divided their survey of world art into categories by area and/or subject,
although only a handful of titles have appeared to date.Both series are
superbly well printed and illustrated; each includes maps, charts,
timelines, and bibliographies. What Thames and Hudson's "World of Art"
series did well for several decades, these two series are now achieving in
a more strictly periodizing form, with greater emphasis on method and, in
the case of Oxford, on Theory.In both the Oxford and Everyman series,
the most fascinating volumes are those which treat subjects broken down
or combined in unusual ways. Thus, Alison Cole's "Art of the Italian
Renaissance Courts" (l995) seeks to compare Naples, Urbino, Milan,
Ferrara, and Mantua--- bringing relative clarity to a topic that most surveys
tend to gloss over. Similarly, Loren Partridge's Everyman "The
Renaissance in Rome" (1996) treats the Quattrocento and Cinquecento
in the Eternal City, chapter by chapter, in terms of urban planning,
churches, palaces, altarpieces, chapel decorations, and halls of state--- all
in a single volume.Before Stalley, the two Oxford volumes I had read
were Jas Elsner's "Imperial Rome and Christian Triumph" and Craig
Clunas's "Art in China". Both are by younger scholars and are massively
imbued with new (politically correct) art history. Yet both books are filled
with challenging and brilliant examples and new information. In fact, the
China volume is written (like all of Clunas's work) from a perspective that
is truly revolutionary in Chinese studies. At the end of the day, both Elsa
and Clunas are so skilled, both as writers and historians, that even the
jargon of the new art history is eclipsed by the sheer quality of the two
works.Roger Stalley, Professor of the History of Art, at Trinity College,
Dublin, writes clearly, penetratingly, and without jargon. "Early Medieval
Architecture" is deftly constructed, and the author claims that his chapters
may be read "in almost any order". This may indeed be the case (I read
straight through and could scarcely put the book aside). It comes, of
course, as no small recommendation that Stalley was a student of Peter
Kidson's.What makes "Early Medieval Architecture" unique is the editorial
decision to relegate the entire topic of "late" medieval building to a
separate volume by Nicola Coldstream. Therefore, hardly a mention is
made of "Gothic--- the question that Stalley addresses being: "What is
Romanesque?" Like its subject the book is suitably austere, yet it is not
without personality. The endnotes are unobtrusive, and there is a state-
of-the-art Bibliographic Essay. All this is supplemented by some 150
varied and informative photographs and redrawn plans and building
sections. There is virtually no attention to sculpture, as befits a scholar
whose interests and sympathies are Cistercian; however, there is a

sensitive underlying concern with the "language of architecture" itself,
such that the book would give pleasure to any working architect. Stalley
has given us ten chapters starting with "The Christian Basilica", where his
subject overlaps slightly with that of the Elsner's book. Appropriately, the
argument returns again and again to Rome. The next chapter is an
exercise in setting forth the architecture of the Carolingian Renaissance,
where light is shed in an area of architectural history that for the novice is
more typically hedged with exceptions and speculation. A third chapter
pursues the "iconography of architecture" in Rome, Milan, Ravenna, and
Jerusalem, as well as lesser-known places. Chapter 4 is devoted to
secular architecture and is somewhat revisionist in tone. The very fact
that such an exercise is provided bodes well for the clarity of Stalley's
enterprise, and there are numerous photographs throughout the book that
succeed in demonstrating a relationship between ecclesiastical buildings
and the architecture of feudalism.Chapters 5 and 6 treat, respectively, the
patron-as-builder and the builder-as-engineer. In this, the architectural
expertise of certain early patrons is stressed, while the engineering
argument is soft peddled, in the sense that techniques of vaulting are not
allowed to dominate a more all-embracing explanation of the general
integrity of the building fabric. As the author reminds us, the story of
vaulting has too often been permitted to get out of hand, leading the
discussion of early medieval structure well beyond what is warranted by
evidence and probably away from what must have been the original aims
and concerns of early medieval builders themselves, whether "engineers"
or not.Chapters 7 and 8 deal with the influences of pilgrimage and
monasticism on early medieval building. Here a number of relevant
statistics and medieval texts are cited that raise the discussion well above
what is ordinarily expected to suffice the undergraduate reader. For
example, the names of the seven major services or "offices" of
Benedictine communal worship are set out and, where needed,
explanation is offered. The discussion of the famous St. Gall plan is
commendable in its detail, while the full-page photographic detail of the
plan is printed in color to show the use of red ink on parchment. Included
here is mention and illustration of the recently restored Cistercian abbey
church at Fontenay, which as a caption points out, may reflect the
destroyed mother house at Clairvaux.The final two chapters are a
magisterial recapitulation of the "Language of Architecture", starting off
"During the course of the eleventh century a new architectural language
emerged in western Europe...", and of its subsequent diversity throughout
Europe. In summary, this is an exciting book that matches some of the
recent strides forward in early medieval social and political history and
provides a superlative discussion of a topic that has rarely been so
coherently presented and illustrated in a single volume.David B. Stewart,
Tokyo Institute of Technology
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