THE FRIARS AND THE NEW PLAINNESS
chose busy towns to settle in and there developed their preaching
technique as a medium of religious propaganda to a degree never
attempted since the days of the Crusades.
Thus all they needed was halls of vast dimensions, a pulpit and an
altar. Beyond that their church plans differ in the various countries.
In Italy, the land of their origin, they were at first aisleless halls,
barns as it were, with an apseless choir and smaller chapels along a
transept, on one of the standard early Cistercian patterns. The size
of such churches as those of the Franciscans and Dominicans at
Siena is enormous, 300 feet in length and more. In the north we
find aisleless as well as aisled friars' churches, and in Germany some
hall churches too. Their bare long walk without any towers can be
most impressive (Erfurt). The English Franciscans and Dominicans
relieved this exterior monotony by a tower or spire over the bay
between nave and choir. Otherwise there was often no structural
division between the two parts at all. But hardly anything survives
of complete friars' churches in England, and one may therefore
easily underestimate the influence their style must have had about
1300. Of this more will be said later.
This international tendency towards plainness in the architecture
of the new orders seems at first glance in contrast to the spatial
adventures of Bristol and Ely. In fact, however, die Friars' style and
the Decorated style of England both belong to the same general
trend. The connection between the two can in some ways best be
pointed out by a look at the Late Gothic style in Germany, since it
combines the principle of the plain enclosure with that of a WaId-
weben inside. In Germany^ too, the friars were instrumental in dis-
seminating the new style. It was, however, created in parish churches,
and parish churches are its chief monuments, the parish churches
of the I4th and I5th centuries in which, as in the friars' churches, the
sermon grew more and more to be the centre of the service. The
movement away from High Gothic principles started kter than in
England and Italy, about 1350, and culminated as kte as in France:
about 1500. Its favourite vehicle was the aisled hall, an exception—
in spite of Bristol—in English (and also in French) church architec-
ture. For I4th- and 15th-century Germany it became almost a matter
of course, especially in Westphalia, in the brick districts of the Han-
seatic coast towns and of Bavaria, and, after the discovery of silver, in
the newly founded, newly prospering towns of Upper Saxony. It
had had a long national history, going back much further than the
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