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his maturity, he strove to correct the situation by enlarging the building.
Faced with dire necessity, the abbot embarked on his epoch making building program, tearing down much of the Romanesque work of Charlemagne and replacing it with the more spacious aisles made possible by the pointed arch. Whatever its origins, the Gothic style had found its reason for being, a reason created by the crusading movement.4
The splendid result of Suger's innovation was built between 1135 and 1140 and confirmed in 1144, marking the beginning of the movement towards a new and more vigorous intellectual culture throughout Europe. Within decades, Gothic buildings were springing like wildflowers from the fertile soil of Europe: at Sens (1144-68), Chartres (1160), at Autun, at Nevers, at Senlis (1156), Soissons and Laon (1160), and at Notre Dame de Paris (1163).5
The pointed arch, the ribbed vault, the flying buttress, all the elements which together make up this twelfth century architectural form, are merely the concrete embodiment of the startling new intellectual crop that sprang unexpectedly from the stony ground of the eleventh century, and which enriched the lives of all the generations to come, both men and women.
THE HUMBLE CASTLE BECOMES A HOME
A similarly dramatic revolution occurred in both military and domestic architecture.
Thus, the carpenter Lodewijck of Bourbourg described a fortified house he built for Arnold of Ardres in the Pas de Calais in 1117. The tower was built on a mound or motte, and consisted of a first storey built on the ground surface, where there were cellars and granaries, casks and barrels and other domestic utensils. In the next storey were common living rooms in which were larders, rooms for bakers and butlers, and a great chamber in which the lord and his wife slept.
Next to this complex was a private room, the dormitory of the waiting maids and children. In the inner part of the great chamber was a private room in which a fire was lit at certain times early in the morning or in the evening, during sickness, at time of blood letting, or for warming the maids and weaned children.
In the upmost storey was a garrett, with rooms on one side for the sons, when they wished it, and on the other side for the daughters, whether they wished it or not. The watchman and other servants guarding the house used to sleep there on occasions.
High up on the east side of the house, easily reached, was a chapel, painted like the tabernacle of Solomon. Stairs and passages went from storey to storey, room to room, from the house to the kitchen, and from the house to a loggia where the household used to sit in conversation or recreation.6
Here we see the beginnings of the importation of domestic life into the grim military strongholds of European feudal society as the new castle architecture, tempered by the Crusades and brought into Europe by returning Crusaders, changed the lives of medieval women.
For one thing, the new European castles of the twelfth century were immensely big in comparison to the previous fortress towers: there was simply more space in which everyday life, especially that of a non military nature, could be transacted.
The pre-Crusade stone fortifications of Europe are distinguished by their space saving functionality. As in the Tower of London, Windsor, Dover or Chepstow Castles, the characteristic form is a square or oblong tower, perhaps with a square tower at each corner, with a basement or undercroft ground floor for storage, a middle floor serving as a great hall, also known as a solar, and perhaps an upper storey reserved for the lord and his family. These were replaced by either new forms of fortification learned from the Crusading experience, added to until their original form became all but unrecognisable, or built along new lines modelled on the castles of the east, The most striking combination of all these factors is the famous chateau Gaillard, built by Richard the Lionheart on his return from the Holy Land, which consists of a more decentralised series of buildings with extra rooms for comfort and repair.
Historians initially considered that the Christians, and especially the Hospitallers, were more heavily influenced by Byzantine military architecture than by Arabic styles, especially in the building of fortresses such as the Kerac des Chevaliers, Tortosa and Chateau Pelerin. The Byzantine style had in turn been inherited from the Romans. In the construction of Syrian fortresses, the crusaders adopted double enclosures flanked by towers, and putting large towers on each side of outlying defences, such as gates. This was perhaps the origin of the bastilles found two centuries later in Europe.
The Templars, by contrast, imitated Saracen castles, as at Safita and Areymeh. In both cases, however, the new fortifications placed less emphasis on the fortress like nature of the central keep, which was thus able to be made more spacious and pleasant.7
Recent analysis, however, tends to emphasise an echoing and amplification of existing knowledge in both spheres, with the Christians adapting their Roman heritage of fortification to the local eastern conditions, and being inspired by their eastern experience to build in a more adventurous fashion upon their return home.8
...AND THE HUMBLE HOME BECOMES A CASTLE
In residential townhouses and rural manors, there was also a transformation.
In England, the standard Anglo Saxon hall was large, rough and draughty, so draughty indeed that King Alfred's candles were continually blown out by the wind whistling through his palace! On another occasion, the witan - the high council - of England fell through the roof of the upper chamber of the hall at Calne, except archbishop Dunstan, who saved himself by clinging to a supporting beam.9
The pre-conquest English house was essentially a large hall divided into aisles by the posts supporting the roof beams. This hall was typically mounted on a ground floor. There may have been a separate bed chamber for the lord and lady, but this was usually at the main entrance, so that they had to transverse the length of the building through hosts of
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