‘Like, or Better’: Building Contracts and Late-Medieval Perceptions of Quality in Architecture

Abstract

This article uses building contracts to understand late-medieval perceptions of quality in architecture. The focus of the paper is value judgements based on existing buildings, which were to be emulated or ‘bettered’. The contracts for Magdalen College, Oxford are the central case study. This paper argues that ‘good’ in these contracts refers to the function of the building and the specifics of its design, and that other English and continental contracts also focus on the visible particulars of a structure. Such contracts make no reference to religious or political symbolism, rhetoric or iconography. It seems that, when closely engaged in the practice of building, medieval patrons and craftspeople showed aesthetic preferences of a precision not found in other sources.

Keywords:

• architecture
• building contracts
• aesthetics
• masons
• agency
• internationalism
• literacy

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This paper is based on my MA dissertation at the University of York. I would like to give special thanks to my MA dissertation supervisor, Professor Tim Ayers. I would also like to thank Dr Gabriel Byng for fruitful conversation on the topic of contracting, and the anonymous peer reviewers for their thoughtful input. All translations are my own unless otherwise stated.

Notes

1 ‘Jestoie mandes en le tierre de hongrie qant io le portrait porco lamai io miex’ (Barnes’ translation); C. Barnes, The Portfolio of Villard de Honnecourt: A Critical Edition and Colour Facsimile (Aldershot 2009), 76.

2 Kant’s focus on the subjectivity of aesthetic judgement is contained in ‘The Analytic of the Beautiful’ in I. Kant, Critique of the Power of Judgement, trans. P. Guyer and E. Matthews (Cambridge 2000), 89–127.

3 T. Johnson, Law in Common: Legal Cultures in Late-Medieval England (Oxford 2019), 266.

4 A. Buchanan, ‘“Vestiges of Conversations?” The Medieval Building Agreement and Architectural Language’, in Language in Medieval Britain, Networks and Exchanges: Harlaxton Medieval Studies vol. XXV, ed. M. Carruthers (Donington 2015), 7–32, at 10.

5 Johnson, Law in Common, 239.

6 See Henry Fitz Ailwin, Mayor of the City of London’s ‘Assize of Buildings’ printed in Liber Albus: The White Book of the City of London, ed. H. T. Riley (London 1861), 276–87.

7 Ibid., 101.

8 G. Byng, ‘The Southchurch Chapel and the Earliest Building Contract in England’, JBAA, 168 (2015), 131–41.

9 L. Salzman, Building in England Down to 1540: A Documentary History, 2nd edn (Oxford 1967), 413-584.

10 Ibid. For building contracts not listed by Salzman, and on European sources, see Buchanan, ‘Vestiges of Conversations’, 10, 29–32.

11 For instance, M. Hislop, ‘A Medieval Building Contract from Storeton, Wirral’, Journal of the Chester Archaeological Society, 74 (1997), 115–21; idem., ‘Bolton Castle and the Practice of Architecture in the Middle Ages’, JBAA, 149 (1996), 10–22.

12 Buchanan, ‘Vestiges of Conversations’, 7–32; G. Byng, ‘The Dynamic of Design: “Source” Buildings and Contract Making in England in the Later Middle Ages’, Architectural History, 59 (2016), 123–48.

13 E. Panofsky, Gothic Architecture and Scholasticism (New York 1957).

14 For instance, P. Binski, ‘Reflections on the “Wonderful Height and Size” of Gothic Great Churches and the Medieval Sublime’, in Magnificence and the Sublime in Medieval Aesthetics, Art, Architecture, Literature, Music, ed. C. S. Jaeger (New York 2010), 129–56. See also M. Carruthers, The Experience of Beauty in the Middle Ages (Oxford 2013), 80–107.

15 C. McCurrach, ‘Renovatio Reconsidered: Richard Krautheimer and the Iconography of Architecture’, Gesta, 50 (2011), 41–69.

16 R. Krautheimer, ‘Introduction to an “Iconography of Mediaeval Architecture”’, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 5 (1942), n.1, 31, 6.

17 For instance, J. Hillson, ‘St Stephen’s Chapel, Westminster: Architecture, Decoration and Politics in the Reigns of Henry III and the three Edwards 1227–1363’ (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of York, 2015), 21; A. Nagel and C. Wood, ‘Towards a New Model of Renaissance Anachronism’, The Art Bulletin, 87 (2005), 405–06.

18 Krautheimer, ‘Introduction’, 1.

19 Ibid., 6.

20 Ibid., 20.

21 Ibid., 1–33.

22 Ibid., 1–20.

23 Ibid., 6.

24 E. Panofsky, ‘The History of Art as a Humanistic Discipline’, in Meaning in the Visual Arts, ed. E. Panofsky (Harmondsworth 1955), 37.

25 Salzman, Building in England, 445.

26 L. Shelby, ‘Monastic Patrons and their Architects: A Case Study of the Contract for the Monk’s Dormitory at Durham’, Gesta, 15 (1976), 91–96.

27 Buchanan, ‘Vestiges of Conversations’, 17–19.

28 Byng, ‘Dynamic of Design’, 123–48.

29 Ibid., 126. For the last phrase, see Salzman, Building in England, 575.

30 Buchanan, ‘Vestiges of Conversations’, 23.

31 Ibid., 21.

32 Byng, ‘Dynamic of Design’, 142.

33 Emphasis added. Salzman, Building in England, 546.

34 E.g., ‘Fabrefacio, fabrefeci, fabrefacere, to warke cunnyngly, to buylde’: T. Eliot, The Dictionary of Syr Thomas Eliot Knyght (London 1538), 51.

35 See Addendum in Buchanan, ‘Vestiges of Conversations’, 29.

36 D. S. Leach, ‘Carpenters in Medieval London c.1240–1540’ (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, Royal Holloway, University of London, 2017), 55.

37 Ibid., 21.

38 Salzman, Building in England, 506.

39 Ibid., 557.

40 Ibid., 476.

41 See the summary of Fotheringhay’s history in R. Marks, ‘The Glazing of Fotheringhay Church and College’, JBAA, 83 (1978), 79–83.

42 Buchanan, ‘Vestiges of Conversations’, 21.

43 Salzman, Building in England, 396; S. Brown, The Great East Window of York Minster: An English Masterpiece (London 2018), 25.

44 Salzman, Building in England, 476, 506; Magdalen FA3.1.1F.1, fol. iii.

45 Ibid.

46 Salzman, Building in England, 476, 506.

47 The ‘scientific’ study of window traceries however began in the early 19th century, thanks to T. Rickman, An Attempt to Discriminate the Styles of English Architecture from the Conquest to the Reformation (London 1817).

48 Magdalen FA3.1.1F.1, fol. iii.

49 Ibid.

50 ‘Et dimidie in batall’ superius secundum proportionem competentem fundamenti dicti campanilis meliori modo et forma quibus profici debetur’: Salzman, Building in England, 470.

51 Even Rickman was cognizant of the muddy boundary between ‘styles’. See his discussion of Norman and Early English: Rickman, An Attempt, 38.

52 M. Trachtenberg, ‘Suger’s Miracles, Branner’s Bourges: Reflections on “Gothic Architecture” as Medieval Modernism’, Gesta, 39 (2000), 183–202.

53 See C. Wilson, ‘“Excellent, New and Uniforme”: Perpendicular Architecture c.1400–1547’, in Gothic: Art for England: 1400–1547, ed. R. Marks and P. Williamson (London 2003), 99.

54 For a defence of this view, see S. Murray, ‘Notre-Dame of Paris and the Anticipation of Gothic’, The Art Bulletin, 80 (1998), 229–53, at 229–30.

55 Magdalen FA3.1.1f.1, fol. Iii.

56 Ibid.

57 G. Lytle, ‘Patronage and the Election of Winchester Scholars During the Late Middle Ages and the Renaissance’, in Winchester College: Six Centenary Essays, ed. R. Custance (Oxford 1982), 171.

58 An accessible reproduction is in T. Kirby, ‘On some 15th-century drawings of Winchester College; New College, Oxford; etc’, Archaeologia, 53 (1892), 229–32, at 232.

59 Byng, ‘Dynamic of Design’, 127.

60 See R. Willis, Architectural Nomenclature of the Middle Ages (Cambridge 1844), 9, on James Wyatt’s destructive ‘restoration’.

61 Ibid., 3–6.

62 Salzman, Building in England, 513.

63 Ibid., 517.

64 ‘Stephanus tenet ad firmam de eisdem, et erunt omnes lapides sani et integri absque defectu et bene et munde excissi et politi’: ibid., 448.

65 Magdalen FA3.1.1f.1, fol. ii.

66 S. Walker, Building Accounts of All Souls College Oxford 1438–1443 (Oxford 2010), e.g. 28, 32, 34 and 95, but also see for Taynton and Princes Risborough stone used for figurative carvings, 95–96.

67 Magdalen FA3.1.1f.1, fol. ii.

68 Ibid.

69 Magdalen FA3.1.1f.1, fol. iii.

70 ‘Et pro ligatura librorum cum cathenacione eorundem’: Walker, Building Accounts, 260.

71 Krautheimer, ‘Introduction’, 1.

72 It is worth noting, though, that the text was not an exclusively ‘Renaissance’ rediscovery but circulated in MS form throughout the Middle Ages. See for instance the very early 9th-century British Library MS Harley 2767. See also C. H. Krinsky, ‘Seventy-Eight Vitruvius Manuscripts’, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 30 (1967), 36–70.

73 For the definition, see Anglo-Norman Dictionary (online edn), s.v., ‘covenable’, https://anglo-norman.net/entry/covenable (accessed 19 June 2021).

74 Salzman, Building in England, 418, 485.

75 Ibid., 425, 476, 495.

76 On legalistic verbosity, see Buchanan, ‘Vestiges of Conversations’, 25.

77 Magdalen FA3.1.1F.1, fol. iii.

78 Ibid.

79 Ibid.

80 On Bernes, see V. Davis, William Waynflete: Bishop and Educationalist, Studies in the History of Medieval Religion, 6 (Woodbridge 1993), 67.

81 Magdalen FA3.1.1f.1, fol. iv.

82 Emphasis added. Ibid.

83 Magdalen FA3.1.1f.1, fol. iii.

84 There do not seem to have been transoms at All Souls originally, since they are not in the changes noted in H. Colvin and J. Simmons, All Souls: An Oxford College and its Buildings (Oxford 1989), 11.

85 Emphasis added. Magdalen FA3.1.1f.1, fol. iii.

86 But is followed in Byng, ‘Dynamic of Design’, 145.

87 H. Salter and M. Lobel, A History of the County of Oxford: The University of Oxford, 17 vols (London 1954), vol. 3, 193–207.

88 Magdalen FA3.1.1f.1, fol. iv.

89 L. Brockliss, Magdalen College: A History (Oxford 2008), 23–24.

90 Shelby, ‘Monastic Patrons’, 94–95.

91 F. Toker, ‘Gothic Architecture by Remote Control: An Illustrated Building Contract of 1340’, The Art Bulletin, 67 (1985), 67–95, at 74, 89–94.

92 Ibid.

93 ‘Ad similitudinem dicte crucis […] ad magnitudinem, et pulchritudinem, et ornamenta suprascripte crucis vel melius’: G. Milanesi, Nuovi documenti per la storia dell’arte toscana dal XII al XV secolo (Florence 1885), 93.

94 P. Binski, Gothic Wonder: Art, Artifice and the Decorated Style 1290–1350 (New Haven and London 2014), 352–53.

95 ‘Curious, adj. and adv.’: OED Online (Oxford 2021), https://www.oed.com/view/Entry/46040? (accessed 21 June 2021).

96 Byng, ‘Dynamic of Design’, 146. For the date, see J. Binney, Accounts of the Wardens of the Parish of Morebath (Exeter 1904), 69–70.

97 See Buchanan, ‘Vestiges of Conversations’, as well as Byng, ‘Dynamic of Design’ for accounts of the oral process of contracting.

98 Willis, Architectural Nomenclature, 13.

99 Krautheimer, ‘Introduction’, 6.

100 Barnes, Portfolio, 23.

101 Byng, ‘The Southchurch Chapel’, 134.

102 J. M. Madurell Marimón, ‘Los contratos de obras en los protocolos notariales y su aportación a la historia de la arquitectura’, Estudis Històrics i Documents dels Arxius de Protocols, 1 (1948), 105–99.