THE ANONYMITY OP THE MIDDLE AGES
chancel walls as it had always done until then.1 Articulation re-
mains; but it is a far more sophisticated articulation. Who was the
great genius to conceive this ? Was it Abbot Suger himself who so
proudly wrote a little book about the building and consecration of
his church? Hardly; for the Gothic, as against die Romanesque style,
is so essentially based on a co-operation between artist and engineer,
and a synthesis of aesthetic and technical qualities, that only a man of
profound structural knowledge can have invented such a system.
We are here at the beginning of a specialisation that has gone on
splitting up our activities into smaller and. smaller competencies,
until to-day the patron is not an architect, the architect not a builder,
the builder not a mason, let alone such distinctions as those between
the quantity surveyor, the heating engineer, the air-conditioning
engineer, the electrical installation expert and the sanitation expert.
The new type of architect to whom St. Denis and the later French
and English cathedrals must be ascribed is the master craftsman as a
recognised artist. Creative master craftsmen had of course existed
before, and probably always designed most of what was built. But
their status now began to change. It was a very gradual development.
Suger in his book does not say one word about the architect of St.
Denis, nor in fact about the designer of the church as such. It seems
curious; surely he must have known very well what a daring work
he had put up. To explain his silence one must remember the often-
quoted and often-misunderstood anonymity of the Middle Ages. It
does not mean of course that cathedrals grew like trees. They were
all designed by someone. But in the earlier mediaeval centuries the
names of these men, immortal as their work seemed, did not count.
They were content to be workmen working for a cause greater than
their own fame. However, during the I2th and, above all, the isth
centuries the self-confidence of the individual grew, and personality
came to be appreciated. The names of the architects of Rlieims and
Amiens cathedrals were recorded in a curious way on the pavement
of the naves. A preacher complained that master-masons got higher
wages than others by simply going about with their staffs in their
hands and giving orders, and—he adds—"nihil laborant". A century
after this the King of France was godfather to the son of one of these
men and made him a considerable present in gold to enable him to
study at a university. But two hundred years had to elapse after the
time of Suger to make such intimacy possible.
1 See College Aft Journal, vol. 6, 1947, p- ^3<5-
33