Medieval town

“ Still, the aims of the medieval burgess are more uniform, from one place to another and from one generation to another, than we might anticipate in ages when information travelled slowly, and when the relations of every town to its lord were settled by a separate treaty. ”

“ In the town or near it there may be an abbey or a castle or a cathedral or a royal palace, to which the very existence of the burgess community is due. The townsmen, profiting by the custom and the protection of the great, have grown rich and independent; they have bought privileges or have usurped them. But they have still to reckon with the servants, the retainers, and the other partisans of a superior always on the watch to recover his lost rights of property and jurisdiction; the forces of the common enemy are permanently encamped within the walls. ”

“ These medieval towns, however, during the course of the building of their cathedrals, of their public buildings and various magnificent edifices of royalty and for the nobility, succeeded in accomplishing such artistic results that the world has ever since held them in admiration, and that this admiration has increased rather than diminished with the development of taste in very recent years. ”

“ Indeed, definition was no easy matter, for medieval towns differed infinitely in size, in government, and in the ingredients of their population. In one respect they are all alike; the most energetic and influential, though not necessarily the greater number, of the inhabitants are artisans or traders. But side by side with the industrial colony stand older interests, which often struggle hard against the ascendancy of commerce. ”

“ Above and around her stand her fortifications, gaunt and grey upon the soft sky, like sentinels upon the tops of the green and barren mountains, while half way down, the hills begin to be dotted with villas and terraces, and, as they creep towards the sea, grow white with palaces and campanili, that multiply upon their sides until they become the great town itself, where whiteness is all around in stone and marble. ”

“ Go to the library and get a book on English Cathedrals and Cathedral Towns and read, and think that that is what your correspondent is seeing. Another one is St. John’s Church, still more ancient, with its abbey, a lovely ivy-covered ruin. I could not bear to leave it. Another feature is the old castle now used as an armory and barracks. The hands of the Romans have left many evidences of their work here in the wall, the columns still standing in place of some kinds of fortifications. The old town is full of queer things, and has a weird sort of fascination ”

“ The castle is as essential a feature in all views of the town as it is in history; and rightly too, for had it not been for that fortress there would have been no town. It is a town by courtesy and ancient estate, and a village by size; a village that does not grow and has so far escaped the desecration of modern streets. The market cross, recently restored to perfection from a shattered stump, and the town hall both declare it to have been a town, as does, or did, the existence of a mayor, but such things have long become vanities. ”

“ We walked a while about the garden and ruins of the Castle. Looked down upon the grey-roofed Town, with its Cathedral running parallel with the river Neckar, over which, by a fine bridge, we had crossed on entering; boats shooting curiously over the rapids; vines, hanging gardens climbing up the hill, clothing the rocks, and creeping into their crevices, on every side of us, and up to the very point where we stood. The Town, with its squares and fountains, its narrow long streets, with arched gateways, towers, and spires, courts, and quaint flower gardens, fill the deep valley. ”

“ Summary.—The monasteries in the Middle Ages were the best-drained buildings. "Underground passages" often met with near old monastery ruins were, for the most part, sewers. The gutter which ran down the middle of the town streets formed a kind of sewer. Towns on the slope of a hill were the best drained. In the Middle Ages there were no big manufacturing towns. Each town supplied most of its own wants. Different trades had their own quarters in the town, which is shown in some old street-names. Refuse was left lying about the streets, and the dead were buried in churchyards in the town. ”

“ To the shame of human nature be it said, in later times many of its stones have been carried away for the erection of other buildings; but yet, after full five centuries have flown, it remains one of the few grand and satisfying examples of Gothic architecture in the world.
We leave the ruins for a ramble over the town. In the business parts there is neatness and a limited commercial life. Then we go to the rear, through one of the most romantic roads imaginable, and up the hillside for the views already described. ”

“ The town, notwithstanding that it preserves many relics of the Middle Ages and a general aspect that is venerable, is but modern compared with the older town, now abandoned, that was built on a jagged rock, its ruins mingling with the rock and scarce distinguishable from it. The more modern town is planted on a hillock standing by itself; the streets are narrow, scrambling up the side of the hill, and the houses are dingy, dirty, and dilapidated. The still more modern town lies below the hill. ”

“ They would no more have such a man for a Verger in Westminster Abbey, than they would let the people in (as they do at Bologna) to see the monuments for nothing. [272]
Again, an ancient sombre town, under the brilliant sky; with heavy arcades over the footways of the older streets, and lighter and more cheerful archways in the newer portions of the town. Again, brown piles of sacred buildings, with more birds flying in and out of chinks in the stones; and more snarling monsters for the bases of the pillars. ”

“ Into the hard conglomerate of the hill the town is built; house walls and precipices mortised into one another, dovetailed by the art of years gone by, and riveted by age. The same plants grow from both alike—spurge, cistus, rue, and henbane, constant to the desolation of abandoned dwellings. From the castle you look down on roofs, brown tiles and chimney-pots, set one above the other like a big card-castle. Each house has its foot on a neighbour's neck, and its shoulder set against the native stone. ”

“ We can go across the modern bridge, with its castellated parapets, and climb up the steep ascent on the further side, passing on the way the parish church, standing on the steep ground outside the circumscribed limits of the wall that used to enclose the town in early times. Turning towards the castle, we go breathlessly up the cobbled street that climbs resolutely to the market-place in a foolishly direct fashion, which might be understood if it were a Roman road. ”

“ Behind, the grey houses climb the hill, some of them fine old turreted structures standing in their orchards and walled gardens, ancient town residences of the local gentry, while others are the merest village shops, with wooden balconies and gabled roofs. They lead to the church, not unpicturesque, with a Romanesque choir. Above the mountain rises, clad in beech-woods, with great organ-flutings and overhanging blocks of reddish stone, any one of which, one would think, might fall at any moment and crush into nothingness the little town below. ”

“ It is one of those old, old towns which impress one as a continuation and outgrowth of nature, as much as the nests of the bower-birds or the winding galleries of the white ants; a town which carries the traces of its long growth and history like a millennial tree, and has sprung up and developed in the same spot between the river and the low hill from the time when the Roman legions turned their backs on it from the camp on the hillside, and the long-haired sea-kings came up the river and looked with fierce, eager eyes at the fatness of the land. ”

“ Dol, Morlaix, and other towns in the north of France, contain many suggestions for city architecture. Our own cathedrals and great churches were meant to stand alone, and can only be seen at some distance; the churches on the Continent were often designed for the effect they would have in a crowded town; but here again, the old chronic error has to be met, that Gothic buildings suit country scenes the best, and Classic a town, whereas the only place where a classic building can be employed, except by a man of absolute genius, is in the country among heavy foliage. ”

“ But on quitting the town, in the road to Coutances,--after you come to what are called the old castle walls, on passing the outer gate--your eye is struck by rather an extraordinary combination of objects. The town itself seems to be built upon a rock. Above, below, every thing appears like huge scales of iron; while, at the bottom, in a serpentine direction, runs the peaceful and fruitful river Aure.154 The country immediately around abounds in verdant pasture, and luxuriantly wooded heights. ”

“ You might fancy it to be a minster town, the air of cloisteral seclusion that prevails so well according with the superiorities of the church. Many of the houses have an old-world look about them, and, with a searching eye, you may find bits of unmistakable antiquity—random corners and architectural phantasies—enough to store the note-book of any artist fond of crooked and accidental diversities of grouping. ”

“ A visit there is like a leap back into the Middle Ages. Every street is a varied and interesting composition. No two houses are alike. They were built by the citizens to really pass their lives in. The town is strongly placed upon the crest of a hill, with a river at its foot, and well fortified and protected by massive encircling walls and towers and deep gates, which give it so strong and picturesque a character, while the timber and tile-roofed gallery for the warders still exists along the inside of the walls. ”

“ Everywhere in the town one comes across bits of ancient carvings and sculptures built into modern walls. Even the once palatial residence of the first Christian Emperor, to whom the town owed much of its prosperity, is to-day surrounded by humble buildings that thrust themselves against it with irreverent familiarity. ”

“ No society could be, in spirit and in organisation, more anti-feudal than the free town of the Middle Ages; but it can only secure a safe existence by obtaining a definite position in the feudal hierarchy. ”

“ They who by the grace of God and the stupidity of man owned and ordered these human cattle of the darkest ages, had their homes within this new, strong town-wall; in fat monasteries, secluded behind garden and vineyard; in grim citadels, whose central keep and lesser towers and staircase turrets, stables and outer structures, were grouped about a great court, that swarmed with men-at-arms, grooms, and hangers-on. ”

“ Those who first had the idea of inhabiting the rock had hewn them a shelter out of its sides. This novel mode of architecture was plainly approved of by their successors; for soon from the vast compact mass a town issued, like a statue from a block touched by the wand of Art. An imposing town, with fortifications, chapels, and hospitals,—a town in which man seemed to have eternalized his habitation. ”

“ But why should one take trouble to insist upon the advance of science and art in the medieval city? Is it not enough to point to the cathedrals in the domain of skill, and to the Italian language and the poem of Dante in the domain of thought, to give at once the measure of what the medieval city created during the four centuries it lived? ”

“ The town itself contains no buildings of antiquarian interest, but it has some fine modern edifices. Its chief industry is the manufacture of arms and cutlery. Above the town are the picturesque ruins of a castle of the 15th century. ”

“ In the last century the population of the town has grown from one to seventy thousand. The old order is indeed dead here. There is no effort to attract the tourist, and the castle, almost the sole relic of antiquity, is crumbling into unhindered ruin as it sits far above the drear expanse of mud left by the receding tide. We hasten through the town—we may see a hundred such at home—and seek from a friendly policeman the road to Caerphilly, a village off in the hills which we know has no new-world counterpart. ”

“ When we look towards the town, we see vast convent walls standing defiantly, as those of fortresses, and pile after pile of great square buildings, domes, and towers, rising against the blue, sleepy sky in all their solemn beauty. ”

“ So we find, near many of our ancient towns and cities, a castle, or its ruins—or perhaps only the site is left—where the lord of the town kept a number of men to protect the town and district, even when he was not there himself. ”

“ Here also is more evidence for the social prosperity of the middle class, details of their trade, the contents of their shops, the inventories of their houses, their estates (sometimes) in the country, their house rents (almost always) in the town, their dressers garnished with plate and their wives' ornaments, their apprentices and their gilds, their philanthropy, their intermarriage with the gentry, their religious opinions. Such a living picture do men's wills give us of their daily lives.
These, then, are the three sources from which the life and times of Thomas Paycocke may be drawn. ”

“ How much of its peculiar flavour a town will draw--not from artistic monuments but from the mere character of building materials! How many variations on one theme! This mellow Roman travertine, for instance.... I call to mind those disconsolate places in Cornwall with their chill slate and primary rock, the robust and dignified bunter-sandstone of the Vosges, the satanic cheerfulness of lava, those marble-towns that blind you with their glare, Eastern cities of brightly tinted stucco or mere clay, the brick-towns, granite-towns, wood-towns--how they differ in mood from one another!... ”