STYLES DEPENDENT ON FRANCE retains a certain dignity in spite of all its disasters and the divisioning which has been neces¬ sary in order to accommodate the various sects which possess rights in the building. Its greatest moment is at the Orthodox Easter, with the traditional ceremony of the new Easter fire, brought from the tomb to the multitude waiting, in the darkened Rotunda, with their candles ready for the symbolic light. The beautiful south doorways of the transept of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre are exceptional in their richness. The carved lintels, with scroll-work and figures, recall early twelfth-century Toulousan work.43 Crusader masonry is fine, and the buildings make their point by excellence of construc¬ tion, on which account they are in many cases still preserved entire with but httle change. In form and execution they are comparable to good French work; the designers were obviously men in close communication with the motherland. Many churches were in Cistercian or Burgundian half-Gothic style, though with the terrace roofs which the climate permits. The cathedral of Beirut (now the chief old mosque of the city) is fairly typical. It has a dignified nave of five bays with a tunnel vault with transverse arches and a clerestory. The aisles are groin-vaulted, and the east end is triapsidal. Pointed arches are used; and this, too, is quite general in the Crusader churches. Tyre, Caesarea, and Sebastieh have transepts. Tortosa has chapels arranged like the Orthodox prothesis and diaconicon; the Cluniac priory church on Mount Tabor (now destroyed) had western towers pro¬ vided with small interior chapels. Apses enclosed in blocky masses of masonry (as is occasionally the case in Provence) occur at Nazareth, Ramleh, Mount Tabor, Tortosa, Caesarea. Groin-vaulted naves are unusual, but do occur, for instance, at St Anne in Jerusalem. St Anne has a crossing with a dome on pendentives resembling those of Peri- gord, which is also unusual.44 These buildings have somehow kept alive the rehgious aspect of the Crusade, too often forgotten in the tales of ignoble competitions, greed, perfidy, jealousy, suffering of inno¬ cent Moslem folk and waste of human resources, which are such conspicuous features of Crusader history. Arab observers seem to indicate that the population of the Christian states was relatively well off, and the shrines which still remain breathe of a satisfying religious life. In passing, Cyprus should be mentioned. It was conquered by Richard Coeur de Lion in 1191, on his way to the Holy Land during the Third Crusade, and sold to Guy de Lusignan; the Lusignans held it until 1489. Bellapais Abbey, Cistercian in character though dated c. 1324-9, remains, with several castles, as a memorial to their regime.45 Exchange of Influences: The Problem of Armenia Sir Alfred Clapham, in his excellent book Romanesque Architecture in Western Europe, takes occasion in the chapter on the Holy Land and the East to consider the theories of oriental influence on Romanesque architecture. He was, quite rightly, a convinced ‘ Westerner ’ inclined to place high discounts on theories of direct influence, except where trustworthy historical information is available. This is the case with the Templar churches. 209 SPAIN, PORTUGAL, AND THE HOLY LAND where the Western imitation is admittedly very imperfect. Supposed derivations too often repose on guesswork and superficial resemblances. Stress was laid by Sir Alfred on the point that intercourse between East and West suffered no interruption at the fall of the Western Empire, and that the reconquest under Justinian rendered Eastern influence in Italy and parts of Spain stronger than it had been before. This was true also of the Moslem conquests and the Iconoclastic troubles, which expatriated vast numbers of Greeks - some of them artists, some of them patrons with a taste for Eastern art. The Ottoman Byzantinism affected architecture but little. By Ottonian times divergences between East and West were, strong in churchmanship and monastic practice - especially strong at the time when Romanesque architecture was being formed. Consequently, at that time the actual oriental influence was relatively small, beyond what was being absorbed by a sort of architectural osmosis. Critics with sound architectural training - and Sir Alfred was one - are little impressed by superficial and hterary resemblances when practical and structural elements do not correspond. This objection is valid in the case of Armenian architecture, which is the most subtle, finished, and impressive of all the proto-Romanesque styles. The Armenian architects dealt with the same elements and many of the same conditions as the Romanesque architects of the West. They developed parallel solutions at an earlier period, and since they faced their buildings with ashlar, the superficial appearance of the buildings is sometimes quite similar to Romanesque. One of the most notable buildings in this respect is the cathedral of Ani (989-1001) by Trdat. This is a domed basilica possessing grouped piers; pointed arches, ribs, and vault; decorative exterior arcading somewhat re¬ sembling Pisan work, and (before its destruction) a graceful crossing tower with a dome on drum and pendentives. The Armenian church designs most typically ‘build up’ into domes and towers of this type. The noticeable lack of this arrangement in supposed imitations counts heavily against the idea of direct influence from Armenia on the Occident. Similar doubt attends the idea of direct influence from Armenian ribbed vault construc¬ tion to the West. The history of this sort of vault construction in Armenia begins with Surb Hripsime at Valarshapat (618), where twelve decorative ribs exist, probably sug¬ gested by St Sophia in Constantinople, but forming (in groups of three) the arms of a large decorative cross on the soffit of the dome. The Romanesque-looking Armenian ribbed work of the tenth century is a passing phase; for the development continues into ingenious combinations of ribs arranged (sometimes over four supports) like a printer’s sign for space (=1=) with a turret at the summit, centrally placed. In fact, the Armenians were always interested in centralized rib schemes, and these have had only slight influence in the West. It is known that the Armenians were good masons, and perhaps something of the fine quality of the Crusader churches in Syria is due to them; but the Syrians, equally, are good masons, and doubtless good masons came from France. It is significant that when the French patrons were actually close to Armenia and its architecture - and indeed there were Armenians in Jerusalem also - the architectural influence was nil, or but little more. In¬ stead, we have an ‘ecole d’outre-mer’ which is very largely Burgundian and Provencal French. 210 STYLES DEPENDENT ON FRANCE An authentic case of influence from the Near East on the Romanesque and Gothic world is offered by the fortifications. The Crusaders learned ‘ the hard way’ about Byzan¬ tine and Arab improvements on ancient Roman fortification, which was all, or nearly all, the Westerners knew. French developments of these Near-Eastern motifs in fortification became in the end real architectural features of the French chateaux, and occasionally of the churches. The increasing scale of warfare in the West - for it became national in scope in the courseofthe twelfth century-would in any case have brought about innovations and improvements spontaneously in the Occident, because of the high order of talent attracted to the problem, and the vast resources made available for reasoned programmes of defence. The early Crusader castles in Palestine had traditional square or oblong donjons, within angular surrounding walls strengthened by oblong towers. The perennial shortage of man-power for fighting in the Holy Land made efficient design imperative. Much was learned from local examples of Byzantine and Arab fortification, and from experienced engineers of the area. Progressive improvements - including round towers, taluses, other devices, concentric arrangements, and regional signalling between castles - taught a lesson to the West. Richard I Cceur de Lion of England, son of Eleanor of Aquitaine and Henry II, after practical experience on the Third Crusade, built the finest of the twelfth-century castles in France - Chateau-Gaillard on the Seine at Les Andelys, not far from Rouen (1196-7). It had projecting towers, three successive wards, of which the inner had walls with successive convex projections to increase the effectiveness of defenders’ fire, and a central donjon. It prefigured the concentric castles which were developed in the thirteenth century and built, in imposing array, by the Crusader knights in Syria (including the Krak des Cheva¬ liers and Margat). Further developments ofmachicolated galleries, brattices, crenellations, applied to the royal and noble residences, gradually gave to such structures the picturesque and unmistakable character which we associate with the late medieval chateau. But the development was functional, and the picturesqueness was genuine, not romantic. With this comment on the reflex from the Crusades, we leave the Holy Land, and also for a time the regions where French influence was paramount, in order to take up the sub¬ ject of mature Romanesque architecture in the great areas associated within the Holy Roman Empire. 211