Chapter 7:
The Materials of Building

Marble, stone and wood

The relative popularity of marble, stone and wood in the eyes of
the Middle Ages has an immediate bearing not only on the length
of time antiquities survived, but also upon their ultimate
re-use or preservation. Of all the building materials known to
the Middle Ages, marble was the most highly prized, no doubt
because its importance in the antique and Byzantine worlds was
recognised (cf. Gnoli 1971, 25ff.) - as was, perhaps, the
antique taste for producing almost prefabricated buildings from
yet earlier spolia (Deichmann 1976, 142f.). In both West and
East, marble therefore became a commodity to be hoarded and even
traded, and suitable place-names are given to locations rich in
marble - the forum at Rieti, called the `area marmorea' (
Resgestae Farfae 50, 198); the Porta and Borgo Marmorea at
Gubbio; or the many places called `marmorata', whether in the
Campagna (Tomassetti 3, 1979, 500, 530; 4, 56f.), further north
(e.g. Regestum Lucense no. 1207, for 1163); in Rome itself
(e.g. the Via Marmorata below the Aventine); again in the Farfa
documents (S. Salvatore in Marmora: doc. 1199, anno 1116; cf.
RF 5, docs 193-5, 314; the church is also called `de
marmoribus' in a document of c. 1099/1119, in Balzani
1903, 2, 270); or to a location `in vocabulo ad columnas': doc.
1158, anno 1100). Pisan documents of 1033 and 1034 refer to a
whole area as `marmoraio' (Caturegli 1938, 63f., docs 105-6).
The same toponym occurs on Greek sites (such as the Marmaria at
Delphi) - an indication of how regularly they were robbed. The
material is even deeded, as in the Farfa document (no. 1201,
anno 1097) which mentions `a third part of the marbles' as part
of the sale. Because marble was not quarried in Europe for most
of the Middle Ages (see below, p.00), all these references are
to spolia.


Lack of new supplies sharpened rather than blunted the eye
for high quality - hence the frequent distinction between marble
and stone (where the marble may sometimes be veneer, or a good
stone), as in the mausoleum for the remains of the martyr
Vidianus, which are placed in a `round stone building' decorated
with `six marble columns' (Boube 1955, 113, n. 73), or in the
construction of S. Bénigne at Dijon in the early eleventh
century, when `marble and stone columns' were obtained (Mortet
1911, 27). Gregory of Tours noted that the cathedral of
Châlons-sur-Saône not only `stood on columns' (presumably the
crypt), but was also `adorned with marble and decorated with
mosaics' (HF 5.45); similarly, he mentioned that the pillars of
Saint Martin at Brive-la-Gaillarde were built of different kinds
of marble (ibid., 7.10), and listed other churches graced
with marble columns (Vieillard-Troikouroff 1976, 397): we learn
that the cathedral at Clermont-Ferrand had 70, but are not
surprised that it was his beloved S. Martin at Tours which had
120 (HF 2.14; 2.16). A gate at Turin is frequently called
`marmorea', as is the Roman bridge at Verona (this latter work
as early as Liutprand's Antapodosis, ch. 40); Erchempert's
Historia Langobardorum Beneventanorum describes a locality in
the ninth century as `next to the bridge called Marble' (ch.
44, in MGH Script. Rer. Langob. 1.252). In the Chronicon
Vulturnense, one of the markers in a document of 937 is a
`marble bridge' (RIS 1.2, 419A-B), and another appears near
Tivoli in a deed of 958 (AIMA 5.462D), as does a `marble arch'
in a deed of 934 (AIMA 3.237E). All such references indicate
that marble was not the usual building material.


There are two consequences of such an appetite for marble. A
minor one was the pressure to disguise brick or stone as marble: see
Eraclius' recipe for painting columns to imitate marble (3.xxv,
in Merrifield 1849, 1.183ff.). More important, ordinary stone
could, by extension, be regarded as a splendid material if the
blocks were sufficiently grand: Matthew Paris relates how the
Bishop of Carlisle had made `a most noble stone room' - no doubt
from Roman blocks (L-B England no. 956); and at the seventh- or
eighth-century St. John's church, Escomb (Co. Durham), the
quality and nature of the structure are a result of the spolia
used in its construction (Fernie 1983, 54ff.). Underlining the
labour involved in manhandling such blocks, Fernie suggests that
the Anglo-Saxons `imposed it upon themselves through choice
rather than incompetence', because they admired the work of
`people whom they saw as giants among men' (ibid., 177). The
status of any surviving stone buildings must have been high -
hence perhaps the practice of re-using or continuously
occupying Roman buildings where conveniently situated.


Two further elements in the continuing prestige of marble were
the difficulty of transporting and working it. There are few
detailed studies of mediaeval use of stone, but Buis' study of
Carolingian sculptured church decoration (1976) shows that most
of the stone used was soft and local - which suggests that the
proportion of work in marble actually declined during the
period, although arguably through poverty and transport
difficulties as much as through a lack of good craftsmen (ibid.,
237). Was it technical difficulties or scarcity which ensured
that the tombs of the French monarchs up to c. 1274 were
of stone, not marble? Certainly, the first example in marble,
that of Isabella of Aragon in S. Denis, is characterised as
`very clumsy' (Erlande-Brandenburg 1975, 111ff.). Again, we do
not yet know what proportion of marble work in the south east of
France (where there is no white or grey marble) was imported at
the time by artists of Ligurian origin who certainly imported
designs; but the balance of probability is that a good
proportion was from re-cut pagan or paleochristian pieces (Buis
1976, 239, and table on 243). Spolia were certainly carried great
distances in periods when trade flourished, for trade provided
not simply vehicles, but funds as well: Hodges (1983, ch. 8)
sees trade as `an important source of funds for the ambitious
enlargement of churches and monasteries in the early ninth
century'. England imported material from the Continent - witness
Charlemagne's letter of 796 to Offa of Mercia stating that `we
will order them to be given, wherever they are to be found' (
Eng. Hist. Doc. 1.782): the phrasing might suggest that the
`black stones' in question were spolia, rather than quarried.


Monolithic columns also partake of the aura of
sophistication exuded by their material - even when this is
stone, not marble. Sidonius, describing his villa to a friend,
admitted somewhat ruefully that it was not very richly
appointed: one of his porticos was supported on columns made up
of drums - not `pretentious' monoliths; but he did boast what
must be porphyry columns as well (Letter 2 to Domitius, sections
7, 10, 8). The Carolingian palace of Ingelheim was
said to be immense, and supported by a hundred columns (Riche
1976, 163); similarly the (thirteenth-century?) humorous
account of Le voyage de Charlemagne à Jérusalem et à
Constantinople tells of the richness of the Byzantine Emperor's
palace, which included a hundred marble columns in one room
(lines 342-53: Polak 1982, 162). Sometimes they were considered
important enough to be specified in deeds: the Thermae
Alexandrinae are mentioned in the Chronicon Farfense for 999
(and in the Resgestae) to include `casis, criptis, hortis,
terris cultis et incultis, areis, columnis' (cf. Balzani 1903,
2.18; the relevant part of the RF is reproduced there as
note 2); and in 821, four stone columns were exchanged for a piece
of land at Lucca (Belli Barsali 1973, 470). Frequently the
vocable `ad columnas' was used in place-names; thus in 1100 the
Farfa documents recorded a donation of a piece of land in Teramo
`in the middle of the city ... at the place called ad Columnas'
(Balzani 1903, 2.260). A church nearby was given the same
name, of S. Maria ad Columnas (ibid., 285), and there are other
instances of the name in the same documents in Sabine territory
(ibid., 1.245, 364) and near Firmano (2.177; 1.7, 283).


Since the later Empire, indeed, marble columns had been
popular as spolia, not least because they are portable: they
were often regarded more as trophies than as utilitarian
objects. In 1117 the Pisans offered a choice of booty to the
Florentines, who had helped them in Italy while they were
conquering the Balearics: from bronze doors and two porphyry
columns, the allies chose the latter (Villani, Istorie,
4.30; the list of booty is given in the Gesta Triumphalia,
in RIS 6.2, 94). In 1241, Frederick II took to Palermo
from S. Vitale at Ravenna two onyx columns, `and other blocks',
and consigned marble slabs from Porta Aurea, and `all blocks,
wherever they are found', to the lime-kilns, to help build the
Imperial castle at Ravenna (Spicilegium Ravennatis
Historiae, in RIS 1.2, 578). Such stripping of the
Porta Aurea, with its venerable associations, is a parallel to
the action of the Florentines in destroying the antiquities of
Arezzo, already noted.


To build in stone in the earlier Middle Ages was therefore to
be exceptional, particularly in the North; and it is probably
correct to see stone as a new material which, `on this highest
level of Frankish society ... began to intrude into the northern
tradition of building in timber' (Horn 1979, 2.45). Hence
building in marble represented a veritable new beginning.
Mediaeval builders were impressed by Augustus' boast that he
found Rome of brick and left it of marble (Suet. Aug. 28),
and the motif is implied in many mediaeval accounts of building
operations - as when an early eleventh-century abbot of Cluny
`built a cloister with brand new marble columns (novissimis),
for which reason he was wont to glory that, as was his habitual
jest, he had found it wood and left it marble' (Mortet 1911,
128). The same `before and after' comparison is made for the
work of Abbot Gauzlin of Saint-Benoît who, `finding the altars
of stone, left them of marble' (Mortet 1911, 38); or in the
account of the rebuilding of Canterbury (L-B England, no. 822;
Salzman 1952, 369ff.) - and the stone altars were in many cases
replacements for wooden ones. Part of the emphasis on
improvements at that great shrine no doubt stemmed from a desire
to maintain the lucrative pilgrimage traffic after the fire of
1067 (Gransden 1972, 36f.) - an explanation for many of the
grand churches of the age. Gervase' account of the rebuilding of
Canterbury after the fire of 1174 boasts of the even greater
decoration and size of the new structure: in the pre-fire
building `No marble columns were to be found ..., but here there
are innumerable ones' (Frankl 1960, 30).


As Einhard (26) relates, for Aachen Charlemagne had to use Rome and
Ravenna, as he was unable to find marble columns anywhere else
(for Rome as the source of the Ravenna material, cf. McClendon
1980, n. 36); but he was just as proud of his monastery of S.
Florent, which `we built elegantly in marble from the
foundations' (MGH Dip. Karol. 1.447). The use of marble
was therefore one of the signs of Charlemagne's romanity
(whether or not it held precise political overtones, for others
used spolia without ideological implications: cf. Deichmann
1975, 26; Goodwin 1977), as was his importation of sophisticated
materials to Aachen, of which he boasted that `I have built with
the maximum possible labour and expense, and have adorned my
buildings with precious marbles' (MGH Dip. Karol. 1.442;
and cf. Hamann-Maclean 1949-50, 162). Liutprand, as we have
seen, used spolia for his palace at Corteolona:
Charlemagne probably visited this (Calderini 1975, 180), and seeing
Italian rulers using spolia may have encouraged him to do
likewise. The Song by Alphanus of Salerno in praise of
Desiderius of Monte Cassino's building operations is a parallel
(L-B no. 2282; PL 147.1234ff.), especially when we
remember how the Abbot got his spolia by going to Rome,
`addressing people as his dearest friends and dispensing cash
with a seasonably generous hand', as the Chronicle has it;
however, nearby Casinum still possessed enough pieces for
Francesco di Giorgio Martini to draw (Ericsson 1980, 77ff.,
91ff., 140ff.), so some of the Abbot's material may have been
local.

Building in wood

In Romanised Europe, stone, concrete and brick were the usual
building materials for permanent structures of quality, although
many structures were of wood. For pagan religious architecture,
wood was the usual material in the North (cf. Chapelot 1980,
267ff.), for the proselytising Christians frequently burned
shrines (e.g. S. Gall, in MGH Script. rer. Merov. 4.259,
287f.); the idols they contained were also often of wood - hence
the point of mentioning when they are of stone (e.g. the Life
of S. Columban, in MGH Script. rer. Merov. 4.76). The
stone-built structures of the Roman occupation were, therefore,
exceptional, and the distinction between imported and local
fashions must often have been startling, both under the Empire
and after it. For the Middle Ages, no doubt because of economic
considerations, reverted to wood construction in most of Italy
and Gaul (La Ferla 1981, 10 for Parma; Lesne 1936, 99ff. for
Gaul): excavations of Carolingian Antwerp, for example, have
shown a city of wood, including wooden paving slabs. When
mediaeval writers give accounts of stone or marble buildings,
they frequently emphasise the materials, as we have seen (cf.
L-B England 5.147); conversely, references to buildings being in
wood are scarce. This disparity shows a natural preference for
the exceptional; it indicates that the use of stone was
abnormal, and that of wood was common - as when the author of
The Ruin writes, `Wondrous is this stone wall, wrecked by
fate ... Stone houses stood here' (Crossley-Holland 1982, 55f.).
Private residences in stone, whether in Roman ruins or not (cf.
Bullough 1974, 392), were clearly a status symbol.


Even for palaces, however, the substantial stone construction
of Charlemagne's buildings at Aix - including a bath house - was
exceptional (Cagiano de Azevedo 1977, 312ff.). The Brevium
Exempla made this clear by using epithets like `excellently
made out of stone', to contrast with other buildings `built out
of wood in the usual fashion'; and at the properties of Anappes
and Treola, `stone appears to be the exclusive prerogative of
the royal mansion' (Horn 1979, 2.43). We also know that not all
the important buildings as Aachen were of stone: Charlemagne had
cause to rejoice that the arcade through which he walked after
church one day in 817 was of wood not stone for, according to
the Royal Frankish Annals, it collapsed.


In Italy there were places and periods when wood was used
alongside stone (cf. Bullough 1974, 392ff.): documents from
eighth-century Salerno speak of the re-use of both wood and
stone (Delogu 1977, 131ff.), while a document of 1057 from Parma
requires it to be stated whether a house was `murata' (viz. in
stone or brick) - which has suggested to one scholar (La Ferla
1981, 10) that the normal material was wood; this was also the
case at Pavia (Hudson 1981, 26f.). In Lucca, however, where
Roman remains vie with nearby quarries, it is reasonable to
assume that many of the houses of the poor were built of stone
or rubble, not wood (Belli Barsali 1973, 491ff., 516ff.). Yet at
Tuscania, where extensive spolia must always have been
available, one Roman street at least was re-aligned in the
eighth century, and substantial timber buildings (of which the
post holes remain) were placed along it. By this date Roman
walls surviving on the site were no higher than c. 0.4m, and
could have been built upon - but the new was evidently preferred
to the old. However, the timber structures were themselves
replaced, probably in the following century, by stone buildings
of poor quality (Garzella 1980). In Rome itself, of course, any
new buildings were of marble or tufo, taken from the monuments
(Gnoli 1971, 43ff. for summary); nevertheless, the common use of
wooden roofing tiles in Lazio and Etruria (Arthur 1983, 527)
reminds us of the dearth of terracotta tile spolia in some
regions. Not that antique woodwork did not occasionally cause
wonderment - as with the great beam found when repairing the
roof of S. Giovanni in Laterano in 1341 (AIMA 3.279).


In England stone and brick buildings left by the Romans must
have been conspicuous before the Norman building boom, for they
were `not yet subjected to systematic demolition and quarrying'
(Higgitt 1973, 1). Some pre-Conquest churches were largely or
wholly of wood, perhaps following the lead of S. Paulinus as
recounted by William of Malmesbury (Gesta Regum Anglorum 1.
26), who states (probably incorrectly) that it was Benedict
Biscop who introduced stone building and glass into these
islands (ibid., 1.54); Bede records that Biscop imported Gaulish
masons, to build for him `more romanorum' (Hist. Abb., ch. 5;
on this phrase, see below). Hunter (1974, 35) therefore
sees references to stone, to walls and to towers in Old English
poetry as indicating a great awareness of Roman achievements,
and suggests this as one of the reasons why Roman sites were
used for early monasteries (as at Reculver and Bradwell: cf.
Cramp 1970/2, 34).


The change back from wood to stone must, like the earlier
move the other way, have been due to economic factors. At
Wroxeter where, in c. 500, buildings were made in wood but
imitating classical models (Barker 1973), that material may have
been used from choice, because the fine gravels which surface
some of the streets are made from the ruins of an earlier stone
basilica, abandoned c. 350. De Bouard (1975) notes that the
essartement of forests from the eleventh century onwards meant a
scarcity of wood and therefore a rise in price; and he cites the
case of Wharram Percy, Yorkshire, where houses built after about
1250 are of stone, but those built in the fourteenth century are
again in wood. He also cites the monks of Cîteaux who, in 1098,
built `in their poverty ... a monastery of wood'. Archaeological
evidence for the move to stone is scarce, but does exist for
Tours (Galinié 1978): a castrum was built around S. Martin in
903-18, and it was only then that Gallo Roman buildings
abandoned in the fifth century were demolished for re-use. On
the site of Saint-Pierre-le-Puellier, occupation in the tenth
century meant a wooden palisade but no new buildings; in the
eleventh century, however, walls were built in stone, the
cemetery was extended, and lime kilns were installed in the
still standing Gallo Roman structures (ibid., 48).

`Nostro gallico more' and `more Romanorum'

Visionary clerics and rulers may have imposed building in stone
in much the same way as some historians believe the Romans had
imposed their own practices upon native cultures; so that the
stone buildings at, for example, Winchester, may be viewed as a
Roman interlude - an exception to the wooden buildings which
preceded and followed them. Building in wood (`in our Gallic
manner', as they said in Gaul) was seen as inferior to building
in stone `in the Roman manner', and no opportunities were lost
to emphasise the difference. Indeed, stone buildings played a
part in that `cult for the authentic' which permeates the Middle
Ages; thus Fernie (1983, 35) suggests that the founding of a
church at Reculver, Kent, within the Roman fort and using spolia
`is more likely to have been symbolic than utilitarian, that of
repossessing the Roman past'. This, and other cases he cites
(ibid., 44ff.) are clearly revivals, rather than survivals. The
interest in the fruits of Roman civilisation was particularly
strong in the ninth century, as in manuscripts (Beckwith
1964, 30ff.), which presumably tend to ossify older forms: here
the fantasy buildings of stone and marble (the canopies which
shade the Fountain of Life, with their marble columns and
capitals, and intricate friezes, to the palaces, halls and
arcades of the Utrecht Psalter) are a world far removed from the
architecture of the Empire at this time. Naturally, the same
manner appears in contemporary ivories, such as those of the
Rheims school, where the Psalter was made (ibid., figs 38-40).


Mediaeval interest in stone and marble amounts to an obsession
with solid building in the manner of the ancients - with the use
of strong materials accurately cut and even polished. Thus in
the early twelfth century an abbot of Peterhausen built a tomb
`de quadris lapidibus nimis speciosum': he had already replaced
an earlier altar with a new one built in the same fashion, which
was therefore `maius et sublimius' (L-B nos 1116 and 1115; further
examples in Esch 1969, 43f. and n. 164). Much earlier the
anonymous author of the Life of S. Didier (bishop of
Cahors, died 652; in MGH Script. rer. Merov. 4.588f.) says
the priest built a church `in the manner of the ancients out of
squared and hewn stones, not indeed in our Gallican fashion, but
just as a whole circuit of ancient walls is wont to be built;
thus from the foundations to the topmost pinnacle he completed
the work with squared stones'; and we read in the Life of Bishop
Amandus of a fort on a hill near Lyon as `a fine castle built
with squared and polished stone' (MGH Script. rer. Merov.
5.427); and in the Gesta Karoli Magni ad Carcassonam et
Narbonam of the early thirteenth century,
that a captured Saracen lives on a certain hill `in
which there is an infinity of marbles' (Louis 1982, 1.294) - the
marble being as `marvellous' as the Saracen. City defences are
judged by similar criteria: thus Ratisbon (in the Life of
Haimhrammus, in MGH Script. rer. Merov. 4.476, 478; cf.
L-B no.1207 for the conventual buildings) is described as `built
from cut stones' and again as `built with squared stones', while
the Milan panegyricist, writing in 739, notes of his city walls
that `the immense base is made with squared blocks' (trans.
Wickham 1981, 82). Bede's story (Plummer 1896, 333) of how
Nechtan, King of the Picts, wished in about 710 to build himself
a church in Scotland, specifies that `he had architects sent to
him (from England) who could make the church from great blocks
of stone in the manner of the Romans'.


But what is the exact meaning of `more Romanorum'? We should
bear in mind its vagueness - as when Villani refers to Florence
in the 1330s being `al modo di Roma' (Moskowitz 1983, 61). Bede
refers to buildings being `according to the Roman rite' (`iuxta
ritum Romanorum') (de Bouard 1975, 48-50; cf. Higgitt 1973, 8)
and to `a stone church after the Roman manner (iuxta Romanorum
morem)' (Plummer 1896, 368). But he also writes of
Aethelbert's laws being `more Romanorum'; and, as Heitz (1976,
27f.) reminds us, `more romano' can also refer to the liturgy of
the contemporary Roman church - to a Roman way of doing things
or, indeed, to a knowledge of contemporary Roman artefacts,
which was common even in Britain (e.g. Dodwell 1982, 129ff.) -
as well as to the building practices of the ancient Romans.
Compare Bede's reference to Benedict Biscop bringing from
Rome `a rite for singing psalms ... and of performing the office
of the church, according to the practice instituted by Rome'
(Plummer 1896, 369) - just as he had imported craftsmen to build
Monkwearmouth `in the Roman manner' (ibid., 368, 390). Nor
should we forget that the term must sometimes refer to the
layout of a church rather than to its actual structure
(Doppelfeld 1954). `Opus' is a clearer term: when the Lanercost
Chronicle writes of the church at Hexham as a `basilica Romano
opere insignita' (L-B England, no. 2118), antique materials are
surely meant and certainly survive there (Fernie 1983, 60f.; and
cf. L-B England, 658, 803 for similar use at Canterbury). Cramp
(1970/2, 34) is convinced that `more Romanorum' does indeed mean
a close imitation of antique techniques, writing of Jarrow and
Monkwearmouth and particularly the details of the latter as
representing `a revival of Roman technology'. We can conclude
that the term generally means that spolia were used - and
perhaps that Cramp is correct in believing the term also refers
to building technique (cf. Everson 1979, 410).


Support for this view is provided by frequent references to
building with `squared blocks' - a measure of lavishness.
Indeed, it is a feature in mediaeval accounts of the Heavenly
Jerusalem: in one account it is the citizens who are so
described, both polished and squared (in the Vita Ailredi,
quoted by Dahl 1978, 183). This is illustrated in an account of
the translation of the relics of S. Lorenzo to his eponymous
church in Rome, built about 1056: `a small work, but
accomplished at no small cost ... for it shines all over with
different kinds of metal and marble. In which structure there is
neither wooden wall nor beam, nor anything else of wood' (L-B
no. 2385). It must also, moreover, usually have meant building
with spolia: Cilento, for example (1979, 15), believes that the
references in chronicles to Capua being built with squared stone
must mean that the material came from the Roman amphitheatre;
and Cunliffe (1983, 73f.) detects a similar source for a church at
Bath, which received approving references in the Middle Ages for
its construction.


However, whether the finished effect of buildings made with
spolia would have looked like antique works we may doubt when we
view churches like Brixworth. Even the sixth-century crypt to
the Cathedral of Benevento, that centre of antiquarianism
(Belting 1962, 166ff.) although certainly built with squared
stones, like the contemporary city wall, is rough and irregular
(illus. in Rotili 1978, 10). If the Middle Ages could use antique
materials, only infrequently could they attain the finesse of
antique building techniques.

Marble: a sophisticated material

As intimated above, because it is more permanent and luxurious
than most ordinary building stones, marble has always
represented a higher level of sophistication and `Romanitas'
(Vergara 1981A, 73f.). Its expense even in ancient times caused
Pliny (NH 36.i) to introduce his treatment of it by
calling it `the greatest folly of our times' (on the antique
taste for it, cf. Gnoli 1971, 25ff.). Its shine and colour were
qualities which were used to great effect in later antique art,
as well as in Byzantium (Cagiano de Azevedo 1970; Swift 1951,
70ff.; 126ff.) - qualities which the Western Middle Ages often
sought to reproduce as a parallel to the glitter of precious
metals (Dodwell 1982, 27ff.) : it was naturally used in
preference to stone as, for example, for epigraphs in mediaeval
Pavia (Tozzi 1981, 22). Marble was also prized for the sheer
size of its building members, perhaps because much mediaeval
architecture was built up from small bricks or stones, not from
large monoliths. In the Liber Pontificalis, for example,
the words `mire magnitudinis' are applied to Hilary's adornment
of S. Croce with columns (1.242-3), of the fifth century, and to
Leo III's Lateran triclinium at the end of the eighth century
(2.11).


Such sophistication was infectious, and there must have been
many `improving' builders like Bonus, Abbot of S. Michele at
Pisa, who founded his abbey about 1048: `I sent to Rome for the
columns of the church; and I brought them here by ship at our
cost' (AIMA 4.787ff.). Columns were brought from Luni and
Elba for the monastery (ibid., 790), and then the campanile
erected only fifteen years before was pulled down to put
something better in its place, `quomodo videtis valde pulcrior.'
At Montecassino, Desiderius' building fever continued even after
the construction of the new church: `audentier iam, immo
valentior' (Cowdrey 1983, 16). S. Vincenzo al Volturno, which
used spolia in its construction, was even better provided
through its Imperial gift (cf. Bozzo 1979, n. 54): for if the
pavement slabs were `expolitis', the altar panels were
`perpolitis', and a full set of thirty-two columns was also
used, from `an exceedingly ancient temple ... which had been
constructed with mighty columns and stones of various sorts'
(Chronicon Vulturnense, in RIS 1.2, 368; L-B no.
2509; Hodges 1982 for a survey of the site). Recent excavations
have uncovered enough fragments of monolithic columns to support
this gift. At Anagni, Bishop Peter, at the beginning of the
twelfth century, `having destroyed the old walls of the
cathedral, and dug out the foundations of the ruin rather
quickly, procured an outstanding collection of marbles and of
worked and unworked stones ...' - which were used in the new
building (L-B nos 2093-4). Similarly Liutprand, building his
palace at Corteolona, boasted in his inscription of the richness
of the precious marbles and columns he had used (AIMA
2.363f.). Difficulties encountered were perhaps part of the
game: Desiderius proclaimed at Monte Cassino that `Brought
hither by no easy toil ... Every column came from Rome', as
Alphanus' ode states - although we might imagine that at least
some of his material came from nearby Casinum (Schmiedt 1978,
86f.). He was far from the first to bring spolia from a
distance, for the Longobard ruler Arechi II did so at both
Salerno and Benevento (Delogu 1977, 54ff. places his actions in
their context; and cf. Belting 1962), and there are other
examples from the same period: Abbot Terdinario
had imported columns in 778-9, as Leo Ostiensis, Chron.
1.ii, relates).


A curious story confirms the trouble that was sometimes
taken to bring columns from a distance. A certain Beatillo (in
his Historia di Bari, Naples 1637) relates how, in the ninth
century, a woman who had cured the king's daughter of leprosy
was offered whatever she desired: `The woman asked for, and was
given, a temple which she had seen there (in Albania), which in
ancient times was dedicated to many idols ... all its columns
were brought in his ship, together with a single slab of marble
elaborately worked with the images of the worshipped idols.'
From the spolia a church with two orders of columns on the
façade, together with the marble slab, was erected;
unfortunately it does not survive. Although clearly a later
explanation to account for the columns and the bas-relief seen
at the church, it indicates just how popular was the notion of
the pagan origins of Christian churches. Indeed, Puglia made
great use of marble spolia when the building craze developed in
the later eleventh century - as can be seen from the profusion
of earlier columns, capitals and bases in the crypt at Otranto
(Vergara 1981A).


Desiderius stands out because he did things on a grand scale,
and because he was a good publicist (Cowdrey 1983, 12ff.): he
imported `huge quantities of columns, bases, epistyles, and
marble of different colours' - this last, surely, to be cut up
in order to implement his desire to reintroduce the art of
mosaic into Italy; `and since Magistras Latina had left
uncultivated the practice of these arts (i.e. mosaics) for more
than five hundred years ... the abbot in his wisdom decided that a
great number of young monks in the monastery should be
thoroughly initiated into these arts in order that their
knowledge might not again be lost in Italy'. How accurate is
this famous passage? To fulfil his design, it is known that
Desiderius sent to Constantinople for craftsmen in making
mosaics and pavements (perhaps with important consequences for
the development of art: cf. Toubert 1976; and Bloch 1946,
193ff., for documents and discussion). In fact, he probably had
to import most of his workmen, for we know he also brought
craftsmen from Amalfi and Lombardy. But we need not accept that
the art of mosaic was then dead in Italy, any more than we
should believe that Desiderius' actions were unique - for it was
not in the least exceptional at this period to turn to
Constantinople for expertise. Several of the fine sets of bronze
doors still to be seen in Italy came from Byzantium, as did the
9.14m wide polycandelon that Desiderius also ordered for
Monte Cassino - imports which throw into relief the bronze
casting-achievements of Charlemagne's craftsmen at Aachen.


The work at Monte Cassino therefore profited from an already
strong Byzantine export trade in works of art (cf. Nickel 1978);
Desiderius' originality lies, as we shall see ( below, p.00), in
having the craftsmen work in a style which does not appear to be
Byzantine. Comparable in an earlier period would be Benedict
Biscop's sending to Gaul for workers in glass, and for
stonemasons to build Wearmouth (founded 674) `in the manner of
the Romans, which he always liked' (Plummer 1896, 368). What is
more, we should bear in mind the pervasive belief that `they did
it better in older days': compare the comment on the gold cross
presented by Dagobert to Saint-Denis, that no one could make
such a thing any more, `eo quod de usu recesserit' (Lesne 1936,
185f.). This Western love for the art of Constantinople remained
strong: witness the thirteenth-century Venetian copies of
Byzantine reliefs, `which are in some cases very difficult to
distinguish from imported Byzantine works' (Demus 1955, 349);
although the material itself was sumptuous, it was mainly its
associations which conferred prestige.


Desiderius must have been well aware that his structure was
the descendant of a pagan shrine demolished by S. Benedict - a
place formerly inhabited, as Dante says (Paradiso 22.39)
by a `gente ingannata e mal disposta.' But that shrine had been
speedily demolished: as Alexander Minorita has it, `contrivit
idolum, subvertit aram, succendit lucum' (MGH Quellen zur
Geistesgeschichte d. Mitt. 1.180; in his Commentary on the
Apocalypse, ch. 10). His new structure imitated Roman
buildings by using precious marbles, as Alphanus' ode (PL
147.1237) declares: `Here green porphyry makes the alabaster
shine ... Such a great glory of decoration gleams here that
Rome itself cannot (as I consider) produce anything of greater
worth.'


Glory by association, though usually restricted to porphyry, the
Imperial stone, also appears on the granite column in S.M. in
Ara Coeli inscribed A CVBICVLO AVGVSTORVM (Valentini 1940/53,
3.29, n. 1; (Esch 1969, 19), Verdier 1982, 96) - although this
is the only example I know of a `written' tradition.


In England, where there was no true marble to be quarried at
all, fashion-conscious builders had either to use local spolia
or to import foreign material. Asser's Life of Alfred the Great
(written at the end of the ninth century in the tradition from
uetonius to Einhard) noted his `restoration of cities and towns
... of golden and silver buildings ... of the royal vills
constructed on stones removed from their old site, and finely
built by the king's command in more fitting places'
(Crossley-Holland 1982, 196) - which can only refer to the
dismantling of Roman constructions. According to a
twelfth-century account, Aldhelm, the seventh-century incumbent
of a church in Somerset, brought from Rome `an altar of shining
white marble, six feet in thickness, four feet in length and
three palms in breadth, with a lip projecting from the stone,
and beautifully carved round the edge' - which sounds like an
antique entablature; a camel had carried it as far as the Alps,
and broken its own back and the altar in the process - both
being miraculously restored (Salzman 1952, 357).
Perhaps such imports were not rare, because of a natural
desire to ape the Continent - hence the prelate who, praying
before the tomb of Peter in Rome, vowed to build a stone church
back home in Shrewsbury (L-B England, no. 4221). There also
survives an account of Roger, Prior of Durham (c. 1140) who,
`as he had heard that churches visited by pilgrims in lands
beyond the seas were glorious with pavements of marble, decided
to beautify his own church, and asked pilgrims `to bring back
with them bits of marble stones for the work'; similarly Richard
of Ware (died 1283) came back from Rome to be Abbot of
Westminster, and `brought with him merchants and workmen, two
hundred slabs of porphyry, jasper and Thasos marble' to make the
marble floor (L-B England no. 2854). The legend on his tomb
there read: `Abbas Richardus de Wara qui requiescit hic portat
lapides quos huc portavit ab Urbe' (ibid., no. 2855). But did he
get the Thasos marble direct from that island, or was it sold to
him by middlemen?


Another reason for the aura surrounding marble was that it
would often take a high polish (antique objects large and small
were `polished' in both senses: Hamann-Maclean 1949-50, 160).
The Middle Ages appreciated the equation between whiteness and
purity (Paschal II's tomb is described in LP 1.305, as `of the
purest marble'), but they were also fascinated by the idea of
finish which they found in antique sculptures and buildings,
reflected in a description of the amphitheatre at Atina as
having `great blocks of stone, and polished marbles' (in the
Chronicon Atinense, RIS 7.904). This
concern goes hand in hand with the interest in `squared' blocks,
because a flat surface takes the best polish: the tomb of S.
John of Beverley is described as being of marble `flat and
polished' (L-B England no. 342). Adhémar (1939, 51) cites a
monument in Provence decorated with sheets of green marble which
was called the `Palais du Miroir' for this very reason. Whole
churches could partake of the same prestigious finish, as with
the marble pavement in the new church at Canterbury (Salzman
1952, 146f.), or Suger's titulus at Saint-Denis (Verdier 1982,
342f.). Suger referred directly to polish in
his titulus for the porphyry vase now in the Louvre (`by the
hand of sculptor and polisher': ibid., 355). That he should
transform it into an eagle which owes more to the Germanic
Kleinkunst tradition than to the classical world must mean, if
we accept Verdier's comparison (ibid., 359, n. 41), that he
modelled the work on Ostrogothic material.


Some churchmen condemned such material sophistication: thus
Saint Bernard writes of `sumptuous polishings' in his catalogue
of vanities against which church builders must beware (c. 1124;
cf. Mortet 1911, 366ff.; Dahl 1981, 173ff.). The difficulty was
that, in the eyes of some, religious vessels from churches to
reliquaries should reflect the splendour of heaven - hence the
richness of reliquaries and the desire to house saints' bones in
antique vessels when possible - as in the translation of
Ethelreda and Sexburga at Ely (founded c. 672) into a `shining
white marble tomb' (Dahl 1978, 184f.) which, according to the
Liber Eliensis, was `of the whitest Parian marble, as befits
virginal purity' (L-B England, no. 1560). Buscheto, architect of
Pisa cathedral, emphasizes the whiteness of his construction in
his triumphant inscription of c. 1120, where he compares
the brilliance of its marble to the dark labyrinth built by Daedalus.
Tension was inevitable between those who wished for
simplicity and those who wished to beautify the House of God,
and this is reflected in the frequent comparisons between
earthly projects and the realm of heaven - never more curiously,
perhaps, than in the use of marble - `smooth, splendid and dark'
- as a metaphor for the Virgin (Life of S. Hugh of
Lincoln: L-B England, no. 2373.


Just as stone was sometimes a substitute for marble (as for
example with Purbeck or Frosterley stone), so stone could take
on one of the terms better associated with marble, namely
`polish'. Thus the still standing crypt at Hexham, built in
675/80 largely of Roman stone (some of it decorated) is
described in Eddius' Life of S. Wilfrid of Hexham as
having `marvellously polished stones ... various columns and
many porticos' (MGH Script. rer. Merov. 6.216f.); it is
also described, in truly Pevsnerian terms, as better than any
other work north of the Alps. William of Malmesbury says that
masons from Rome advised Wilfrid in his building work, and that
`those who see the building at Hexham would swear that they
could fancy the pride of Rome was here' (Salzman 1952, 356). An
analogy is the twelfth-century comparison between S. Peter's,
Rome, and St. Peter, Chester (Gransden 1972, 47), which gives
further insight into the possible meanings of churches `in the
Roman manner'.


Other reasons for the popularity of marble were its
durability, and the high cost of cutting it, even from spolia.
By the early eleventh century (well before the quarries around
Carrara were open again), marble-working was a recognised trade,
as a diploma of Henry II of 1021 mentions one `Vitalis the
marble-worker', who lived in a house at Classis owned by a
cleric in Arezzo (MGH Dip. Reg. Imp. Germ. 3.590) - a most
convenient domicile for his trade, of course. It was a trade
popularised by the Roman marble workers, who re-used antique
materials to create intricate marble veneers (Lanciani 1902-12,
1.8ff.; Glass 1980); and we might wonder whether the vogue for
such `jigsaw' constructions of small pieces was not as much a
reflection of the difficulties involved in obtaining and cutting
the material, as of stylistic preferences.

Precious marbles

Some types of marble were especially prized. Gregory of Tours,
for example, may have developed his taste for marble from
reading its praises in authors like Statius (Silvae 1.v) or
Sidonius (Carmine 22.140-1) He particularly liked Parian,
perhaps because of its crystalline whiteness, which was so
different from the often coarse-grained stones of Gaul. Others
shared this preference: we read of the tomb `of polished Parian
blocks' in Saint-Trond, near Liége, in the eleventh century
(Mortet 1911, 159; L-B no. 1984; and cf. nos 2026 and 2031), and
of the columns of Parian said to be in St. Amand-les-Eaux by the
same date (L-B no. 1631). Desiderius built an altar of Parian
over the tomb of S. Benedict at Monte Cassino. Even Lincoln was
said to have had `Parian stones and marble columns' in the
twelfth century (L-B England, no. 2366). And, most
enterprisingly, Archbishop Bisantius (died 1035) is said to have
brought twenty great columns and two hundred small ones from
Paros itself for the cathedral at Bari (Müntz 1887, 46; cf. the
Greek spoils for S. Gregorio: Esch 1969, 20).


If white marbles were prized for building, then a few rare
coloured ones were positively treasured. Suger collected them at
Saint Denis (see below), and most churches boasted at least
some: thus the Cathedral at Clermont Ferrand had an image of the
Virgin on a jasper pedestal (Vieillard-Troikouroff 1960, 214f.)
- a reflection, perhaps, of the legend of S. James the Greater's
vision. Porphyry was throughout the Middle Ages the most
venerated of all marbles. It had been the Imperial marble par
excellence, because its colour was associated with authority
throughout Antiquity (Reinhold 1970): it retained connotations
of Imperial authority and power in Byzantium and the West
(Delbrueck 1932, 26ff., 148ff.; Glass 1980, 48ff.) - qualities
quickly prized by mediaeval layman and, indeed, the Popes (Glass
1969). Porphyry's Imperial connections helped its Christian
prestige for, as Reinhold (1970, 73) remarks, `the use of purple
was gradually institutionalised by the Church'. The porphyry
rota in Old S. Peter's, which played an important part in the
Imperial coronation ceremony, is analogous, as is that in Hagia
Sophia at Constantinople, where porphyry columns are a feature
(as are porphyry statues elsewhere in the city: PG 157.663f.).
In a similar vein, perhaps, Caligula had dressed himself in the
thorax of Alexander (Suet. Calig. 52) as an index of his power.


The last ancient Emperor buried in a porphyry vessel was
Marcian in 457, but such sarcophagi became fashionable for the
burial of later emperors and popes who, after the quarries were
closed, had to seek spolia (Esch 1969, 27ff.). This sometimes
proved difficult (Deér 1959, 129ff.; 136ff.; 150ff.): the
porphyry lid over the remains of Otto II (died 983), once in the
atrium of Old S. Peter's, covered a vessel made up of sheets of
other marble (Pisa 1982, no. 62). Wishful thinking could be
involved in the adoption of this `imperial' stone, as when
Innocent II was buried in a 1143 in a porphyry sarcophagus in S.
Giovanni in Laterano: this was supposedly that of Hadrian, and
taken from his Mausoleum - but Hadrian was incinerated, and his
remains therefore placed in an urn, not a sarcophagus (cf.
Cecchelli 1951, 36; 63). Hadrian IV (died 1159) had to make do
with a vessel of red granite (Pisa 1982, no. 84). The
re-adoption of the material by the Normans in imitation of the
papacy is well known, and those sarcophagi which were cut from
solid blocks may have been fashioned from columns, as Giuliano
suggests (1980, 21); those made after 1154, however, are
constructed from slabs, indicating the scarcity value of the
material.


In the Liber Pontificalis, we may assume that references to
precious marbles were meant to indicate that their use was
infrequent. Pope Hilary (461-8), for example, built a nymphaeum
in front of the Oratory of the Holy Cross (LP 1.242-3;
cf. Davis-Weyer 1971, 34), `with columns of marvellous size ...
and two fluted shells with fluted porphyry columns spouting water
... adorned everywhere with mosaic work and columns of white,
yellow and porphyry marble'. In Krautheimer's opinion, the
materials for the scheme would have been taken from late antique
villas, and `placed together so as to form a playful, light
ensemble ... The whole courtyard was tiny in size, sophisticated
in intent, and in all likelihood crude in execution,
notwithstanding the grandiloquent and confusing pseudo-classical
terminology of the biographer's account'. Indeed, we find the
term `marmorare' used under Leo III (LP 2.9) for `to face with
marble' - which must be an indication of the re-use of antique
veneers. Unfortunately, no schemes of a similar date survive, by
which we might judge the likely quality and effect of Hilary's
structure. Silvester, in the previous century, had adorned the apse of
S. Lorenzo `with porphyretic marbles' (LP 1.181); Leo III, over
four hundred years later, did much the same, enriching the
presbyterium of S. Paolo with `sculpted marbles' (2.10); while
on the altar of S. Petronilla, he used both sculpted and silver
columns. His main refurbishing, however, was the famous
triclinium at the Lateran, for which he used not only varied
marbles, but also a mosaic pavement. As well as `finely hewn
columns of porphyry and white marble', `bases and capitals ...
doors and lintels' were used (Davis-Weyer 1971, 88-9) - the
separate mention of bases perhaps implying that they had to be
separately sought. Such decorations demonstrate a desire to imitate the
antique: Krautheimer points out (1980, 121-2) that there were
similar rooms in the Great Palace of the Emperors in
Constantinople, where antique traditions had survived; so the
Roman scheme could be a mixture of revivalism and the imitation
of Eastern models, themselves antiquarian. According to
eleventh-century texts, however, some of the Eastern
compositions were profane in nature (Maksimovic 1975), so there
is little likelyhood that similar scenes were adopted at Rome
for the palace of a religious prince.


In churches outside Rome, and especially outside Italy,
porphyry was scarce, and much sought after: in the early
eleventh century, Abbot Gauzlin of Saint-Benoît-sur-Loire
sent to Italy for materials, including porphyry (Mortet 1911,
38). It had to be used sparingly, as in the presumably
twelfth-century tomb of Fredegonde (died 596), which is made in
a cloisonné technique using fragments of porphyry and
serpentine (Erlande-Brandenburg 1975, 114, and cat. 15). It must
have been both the shine and the preciousness of porphyry which
appealed to Lothar (died 855), who imported a porphyry plaque
from Ravenna which was `exceedingly valuable and very
translucent, like glass', as the Liber Pontificalis has it
(cf. McClendon 1980, 164 n. 34 for Saint-Médard at Soissons
as its suggested destination); and the porphyry bath-tub in the
Treasure of Saint Denis was possibly the first tomb of Charles
the Bald. Suger's own love for the material is reflected in his
adornment of the antique porphyry vase (already mentioned) as an
eagle, with the inscription This stone deserves to be
enclosed with gems and gold. It was marble, but set within these
it is more splendid than marble (Montesquiou-Fezensac 1977,
Inv. 221 and 28).

Marble as the stuff of legend

The popes had little difficulty in finding marble in Rome for
most of their projects; but its scarcity in the North meant that
marble often seemed the very stuff of visions and legends, not
reality. Aethelwulf, in his De Abbatibus, dedicated to Egbert,
bishop of Lindisfarne (d. 821), had a vision, with a church
containing a row of small cells: `encircling the temple
completely with their bright entrances, these afforded a view
into a hall which was very marvellous with marble' (2.718-20).
A French sermon of about 1000 AD relates a similar vision of the
Cathedral of Clermont Ferrand shining with marble
(Vieillard-Troikouroff 1960, 212ff.). And in the French
romances, the wonderful cities are of marble: Troy in the Roman
de Troie (ll. 3155-62) and the Roman d'Enéas (ll. 465-70),
and Carthage in the latter (ll. 441-7); in the Chanson de
Roland, thresholds are `shining with marble', and sarcophagi
`of white marble' (lines 2268, 2272, 2312, 2966). Such
characteristics might derive from knowledge of Roman enceintes
extant in Gaul, or of other structures (including gates in
Italy) faced with marble. At Autun, for example, the Porte de
Rome was called the `Porte des Marbres' in the Middle Ages; like
the other gates, it was faced with stone, not marble (Duval
1962, 165), but it may have been decorated with marble
sculptures. In the North, later centuries showed progressively
less concern with the correct imitation of the antique, whether
pagan or Christian. Thus from about the thirteenth century in
France, references to monumental remains (everything from
megaliths to temples) as the work of `Saracens' betrays a lack
of knowledge if not of interest (Adhémar 1939, 112ff.), for the
populace clearly did not know who had built them, except for the
fact that they were foreigners: compare the use in the
thirteenth-century `Livre des Métiers' of Paris of `Saracen
carpet-makers' to mean those who produced oriental carpets (for
the `Saracen' carpet at Glastonbury, cf. L-B England, no. 1868).
Even in Italy, and long before Benvenuto Cellini's incantations
in the Colosseum, Roman structures were associated with things
magical (cf. Graf 1915). One example from many, and similar to
the many legends of Virgil the necromancer, concerns the
curative powers attributed to a bath on land supposedly once
occupied by a villa of Cicero's, and so named (Garrison 1978).


Occasionally, `fairy-tale buildings' were actually
constructed, and a conspicous example is the castle of
Caernarvon, close to the ruins of Segontium, which was
associated by Nennius and others with the Emperor Constantine.
This legend, and the very form of the castle, leads Taylor
(1970/2, 42) to make the convincing suggestion that the
structure is modelled on the Theodosian walls of New Rome itself
- especially since one of its gates was also called the Golden
Gate!

The end of antique marble production

Let us now consider the reasons for marble shortage in mediaeval
Europe, and the effects this had on the use of that highly
prized material.


In most of the Mediterranean `the large-scale production of
marbles and granites did not survive the fall of the Western
Empire' (Ward-Perkins 1971, 538), the one exception being
quarries in the French Pyrenees, which may well have been
supplying stone into the seventh century, although they had
certainly stopped by the time of the Saracen invasions, not to
begin again until at least the eleventh century. But this
production was on a relatively small scale, judging by what has
survived; Ward-Perkins' comment that those quarries still in
production in the sixth century `were no longer equipped to
furnish materials on the scale called for by an Imperial
building programme' (ibid., 539) provides the crucial point -
namely that henceforth all ambitious building schemes had either
to build in new materials and methods or, if they wished to
imitate the glories of the antique past, to use spolia.
Nevertheless, plenty of marble capitals in Italy can be dated to
the sixth to eighth centuries (e.g. Vergara 1081A, Nos 4-6,
12ff.), although some of these may be Byzantine imports.
And could it be, as Wickham (1981, 81) has intimated, that
the very availability of disused antique buildings in Italian
towns was a factor in the demise of quarrying? This certainly
fits with the view of an imprudent over-expansion of some sites
from the third century (Dauphin 1980, 126 n. 65) and thereby
an abundance of spolia. Similarly, some of the sculpture of the
Romanesque period (such as that at Sangemini: Ciotti 1976, 46)
is re-worked from Roman blocks - again suggesting that spolia
held back the redevelopment of quarrying. It would also explain
why it is the earliest buildings of late Antiquity or the Middle
Ages (such as S. Lorenzo fuori le Mura) which are embellished
with the largest suites of matching columns and capitals: later
ones had to use the ever-diminishing resources of spolia (cf.
Rodocanachi 1914, 21ff.; Deichmann 1975; Deichmann 1976,
134ff.). Later, such luxury was not possible: as Malmstrom
(1975) has shown for High Mediaeval churches in
Rome, designers tried to make significant
patterns from what they had available, separating the nave into
functional parts by marking them with differing types of
columns. In the East, supplies of spolia were apparently so
large that Goodwin (1977, 21) maintains that the Ottomans cut no
columns for their buildings until the eighteenth century, `for
the quantity of Byzantine columns available obviated the need to
preserve such a skill'; and, he suggests (ibid., 26) that in Egypt
no marble at all was quarried after the Islamic Conquest,
but that spolia were used for the production of veneers.


In Antiquity itself, indeed, marble - especially the rarer
varieties - was sometimes in short supply, and large stocks of
new and used building materials might be held in or near urban
centres: such stock-piling would have been needed for any large
building projects; the Cancelleria reliefs were part of such a
stockpile in a builder's yard. Stockpiles, by their nature,
could be long-lasting, as we shall see. By extension, pieces of
exotic marble used in mediaeval building projects must either
have been first cut before the fall of the Empire, and therefore
been spolia; or been imported (also as spolia) during the Middle
Ages.

Marble shortage in mediaeval France

Although references are not lacking in documents and literature,
it is clear that antique marble was less used in mediaeval
France than in Italy. The supplies were so much smaller, and so
many Gallic antique buildings were made of commoner stones, or
of diverse types of marble pieced together - whence perhaps the
respect for integrity: thus Gregory of Tours, for example, is
careful to mention that a mensa is made `from one piece of
marble, completely sculptued' (Glor. Martyr. 1.94). Marble shortage
therefore dated from antique times: one indication of this is
the imitation of Roman and Attic sarcophagi (Koch 1982, 296ff.),
which sometimes involves the re-use of marble blocks, as in that
of olive-harvesting putti in the Musée de Sculpture Chrétienne,
Arles, excavated from a solid entablature.


Against such a background of shortage the standards of the
energetic Abbot Suger (of Saint Denis, from 1122) when he began
building stand out in high relief. In good, antique fashion, he
had a keen interest in `old' works of art (Caviness 1973, 205f.,
211ff.), and was mindful of `the concordance and harmony of the
ancient and new work', and tried `by reflection, by inquiry, and
by investigation through different regions of remote districts,
... to learn where we might obtain marble columns or columns the
equivalent thereof' (Panofsky 1979, 91). But he found none, and
thought of bringing columns from Rome, through the Straits of
Gibraltar, and so up the Seine. Perhaps he had it in mind to
copy Desiderius' taking of columns from Rome for Monte Cassino;
or Abbot Angilbert's provisioning there for the monastery church
of Saint-Riquier, c. 790; or even Charlemagne's easy
transport of materials from Nîmes for the new monastery of
Saint Guilhem le Désert, in 812 (Ward-Perkins 1960, 29). But
he settled, as he goes on to relate, for stone from the local
quarry of Pontoise. However, his account indicates that the
columns he cut there were monoliths - and thus, perhaps, partook
of some of the splendour of the antique models it was
impractical to fetch (Frankl 1960, 7). It was, indeed, precisely
in the twelfth century that large-scale production of stone from
the quarries of Normandy, Purbeck and Tournai began; marble
production began at Carrara toward the end of that same century
(Ward-Perkins 1971, 541), for a diploma of Frederick I, of 1185,
mentioning `alpibus lapicidiniis etiam marmorum' (Gentile 1912,
31) shows production had been resumed by that date; another of
1191 (ibid., 34) shows its continuance.

Marble shortage in mediaeval Italy

Even the more sumptuous buildings reveal a careful rather than a
profligate use of marble: at Pisa, the important sections of the
Cathedral are indeed decorated with marble, but most of the
fabric is of black and white stone and brick; no doubt the white
stone was used because it is a good substitute for marble, and
more easily available. Was marble short at Pisa (pace Cattalini
1982, 73) because so much was taken for the Cathedral - even
though that building is far from being made only of marble? Many
spolia had to be brought from outside Pisan territory: witness
the three great columns brought from Elba for the Baptistery in
1159, and the two great ones for Santa Reparata brought from
Sardinia three years later (Maragone 1936, 14).


A tour of the mediaeval churches of Pisa shows just how
sparingly marble spolia were used in their decoration, and how
short were matched pairs of columns, let alone whole suites. At
the twelfth-century S. Frediano, for example, an antique
entablature with later interlace decoration forms the lintel of
the main door, but is noticeably too short for its supporting
capitals; and as the interlace has been simply sawn off at the
left side, we can assume that the piece is in at least its
fourth `life'. At ground level, an effort has been made to match
and patch pieces of antique column to make something resembling
a pair to either side of the entrance. Such attempts at matching
are evident in other churches as well - most conspicuously inside
S. Sisto, which has a higher proportion of marble columns than
elsewhere in Pisa; most columns are `paired' across the nave
(much more successfully than in S. Michele in Borgo, where the
effect is one of undulation), but the one fine `pair' of
cannellated columns is defective, in that one of the two has to
be completed with a plain grey section of un-cannellated column,
and topped by an Ionic capital - unlike the Corinthian capital
across the nave.


One possible indicator of marble shortage is the
distribution of ceramic `bacini' in mediaeval Italy, many of
which were imported from the Islamic world (and, indeed, were
once considered Crusaders' trophies), or imitated from Moslem
motifs. For this reason the vogue for decorating the exterior of
churches with them is a maritime one. It began in the early
eleventh century, and survivals are concentrated in and around
Genoa, Pisa, South Etruria, Rimini and the Abruzzi, Corsica and
Sardegna, with a scattering around Pavia, several in the Marche,
and a few in Attica and the Peloponnesus (list in Mazzucato
1976, 13ff.). Some of these areas have no local supplies of
marble; and in any case most bowls date from well before the
opening of the Ligurian marble quarries. From the ways in which
the bowls were fixed, they were clearly not an afterthought, but
an integral part of the church's decoration. In Pisan `two-tier'
construction, with stone or marble below, and brick above, they
serve to decorate the upper registers, or to embellish the brick
flanks of churches whose façades are stone- or marble-clad. The
vogue was powerful at Pisa, where it is estimated that there
were originally over 2,000 bacini, although only about 600
survive (Berti 1980, 11f.). Could such ceramics be a
compensation for marble scarcity? Or are they more scarce on
churches which do indeed boast marble spolia for purely
aesthetic reasons?


The latest survey of the Pisan material (Berti 1981, 9)
states that the reason for their use was to `revitalise wall
surfaces with certain colours' - and this technique is
contrasted with the Duomo, where coloristic effects are obtained
with marble. Furthermore, it does not seem as if any more than
small sections of brick wall on the outside of Pisan churches
were intended to be plastered, and therefore coloured - although
many walls were later so treated. Peroni (1980, 8) sees bacini
at Pisa as a substitute for marble, while Hugo Blake (ibid., 19)
suggests they resemble antique patera, and are therefore a part
of antique revivalism. Berti's remark about the `revitalisation
of the wall' leads to the consideration of other, related types
of mediaeval external decoration, such as small panels of marble
(frequently disc-shaped) which ornament bell-towers like that at
SS. Giovanni e Paolo in Rome - and, indeed, the façade of Pisa
Cathedral itself. At nearby Grottaferrata, however, the similar
panels are of glazed ceramic, and the Abbey museum possesses two
glazed terracotta columns of substantial size (1.3m high) with
capitals and bases - the one glazed purple, the other spotted
green. Mazzucato (1981, 109ff.) dates these to the later
thirteenth century, but does not point out that the one seems
intended to imitate porphyry, the other verde antico. Perhaps
they were made in Rome - but can their very existence then be
used to indicate marble shortage in Rome? Perhaps: at S.
Francesca Romana, Rome, bacini are joined by crosses in
porphyry; and the tower of S. Pietro at Marino, near Rome, is
decorated with marble pieces as well as with bacini (Mazzucato
1976, 8).

The selection of antique marbles by mediaeval builders' gangs

It is curious that coloured marbles (except as complete,
individual columns) appear to have been so little used in
Western mediaeval buildings before the Cosmati, for the Romans
had developed a preference for coloured marbles, and passed this
on to Byzantium (Swift 1951, 70ff.; 126ff.; Gnoli 1971, 25ff.);
much Early Christian decoration had been in coloured marble or
colourful fresco. There could be three reasons: first, that
white, as the colour of purity, was in vogue (as, indeed, it was
to be for almost all Early and High Renaissance sculptures: the
use of coloured marble veneers begins with the High
Renaissance); secondly, that white marble was easier to re-cut;
and thirdly, that coloured marbles existed in insufficient
quantities (or inconvenient forms) when there was plenty of
white or near-white available.


The gangs which roamed the Italian countryside and plundered
Rome for marble with which to build the great cathedrals
(conspicuously Orvieto and Pisa) were therefore after white and
not coloured marble. Their searches were extensive because their
needs were great (Borsari 1897; Lanciani 1902-12, 1.17ff.; Esch
1969, 24ff.). The detailed Orvieto records document how
thoroughly the marble gangs operated (Borsari 1897, 296ff.), and
they clearly knew where to look for material: in 1321, they were
ordered to Sangemini, near which the antique Carsulae would have
provided ample spolia (Ciotti 1976, 46). Much of what was found
must have gone into the foundations, or been recut, for the
quarries at Carrara (for white marble) and Montagnola (for
black) were heavily used for the outer facings; whether any
material came from Roman Orvieto itself is as much of a mystery
as the exact nature of that city's Roman past, and she may not
have possessed many monuments on which to draw. The Orvieto
documents even tell us what sections of the city of Rome were
visited for spolia. One was the area around S. Angelo in
Pescheria, conveniently situated for the Tiber, and containing
sumptuous temples and porticos - that of Octavia, with the
temples of Jupiter and Juno, and that of Philip, with the temple
of Hercules Musarum. These were probably attacked in 1354, at
which date Borsari (1897) believes the structures to have been
intact; they had certainly not been turned into churches. At
the Portico of Octavia, we can guess at what they took and what they
left for the archaeologists: foundations, not being of marble,
were left, as was the main entrance because it was still being
used (it has mediaeval repairs: Petrignani 1960, fig. 12);
columns, bases, entablatures and marble veneer were all carted
away (ibid., 50f.).


But such gangs did not, as far as we can judge, bother with
the numerous quarried blocks lying about Ostia's port, which had
been stockpiled there since Roman days. Flavio Biondo
(1392-1463) refers in wonder (in his Roma Restaurata,
Venice 1558, 78v-79r) to those blocks he saw about the Fossa di
Fiumicino, weed-covered and half-buried in earth or water, but
sufficient to build a city; he was able to see the masons' and
shippers' marks, so perhaps we can assume that the blocks were
equally visible centuries before. In 1463 the future Pius II
visited Ostia and, in a famous description (in his
Commentaries, of 1471), wrote of `marbles ... whose many
fragments lie unhewn and unpolished, practically all of them
buried by the earth which grows over them'. Why were so many
(perhaps all) of these blocks ignored? We can dismiss the notion
that they were in an inconvenient place for, given the strong
trading connections with the East, of which we have documents
from 1108 (cf. generally Müller 1879), it is simple enough
to imagine that galleys would fill up with marble there on their
way home; witness Vasari's comment that the Pisan fleet brought
home sarcophagi (in his Life of Nicola Pisano).
Furthermore, Ostia itself was certainly despoiled by the marble
gangs, as inscriptions testify (e.g. CIL 14.105 in the
Cathedral, Florence; and CIL 14.430 in Sant'Andrea, at
Amalfi: cf. Calabi Limentani 1966, 186; and Esch 1969, 22f.).
(One might wonder whether the practice of cutting and shipping
smaller columns in `bundles', so that the recipient had only to
cut away the central `spine' holding them together, might have
something to do with the development of the compound pier; for
plenty of such bundles have been found, as at Ostia: Adam 1984,
27).


Were such blocks perhaps left alone because of aesthetic
prejudice? Or because they were unpolished? Were they in some
way defective, of poor quality, or hard and difficult to cut, as
Flaminio Vacca maintained in 1594 of those at the Marmorata
(Gnoli 1971, 22)? Perhaps they lay on private land: compare the
gifts of antiquities on the lands of the Orsini, including Veio,
to help build the Cathedral, and references to work near Albano,
on the site of the splendid villa of Domitian, `to hunt for
marbles, to unearth and to work them' (Borsari 1897, 297ff.).
Antique workshop practice may itself have influenced the
mediaeval preference for white over coloured marble, because
columns would be cut to shape at the quarry but not finished,
whereas exotic marbles would be left in rough blocks (Pensabene
1972, 330ff.). And could it be, perhaps, that sufficient spolia,
conveniently cut into sheets, were already available as cladding
on standing antique structures? All the same, the Fiumicino
blocks recently catalogued (Leotardi 1979) do include Parian and
alabaster, surely hard to resist; and we should not forget that
the Middle Ages was sometimes none too concerned about states of
finish, as some of the capitals in the Upper Church of S.
Clemente - no doubt taken in their present unfinished state from
the Roman marble yards - testify. Certainly, we have evidence of
the need for suites of columns: at an unknown date, the
monolithic columns of the Temple of Antoninus and Faustina were
given diagonal grooves near the top, in an unsuccessful attempt
to pull them down (Adam 1984, 124).


The stocks still lying at the Marmorata in Rome in the last
century may provide another example of a mediaeval
disinclination to saw blocks (even perhaps defective ones) when
alternatives were available (cf. Rodocanachi 1914, 16).
`Marmorata' may have been a classical toponym, and was certainly
in use in 1159, when a document has `Marmorata, sive a Ripa
Romea' (AIMA 1.675C). It is difficult to know the exact state
of the site before the badly documented nineteenth-century
excavation. It certainly yielded a rich haul, for although
pieces were extracted in the time of Winckelmann (Pellegrini
1868) and no doubt before, over 500 pieces of various marbles
were found in 1868 (ibid., 151f.), and a further 500 pieces of
serpentine were extracted when a late wall was demolished,
together with 585 cubic palmi of cipollino (cf. Gatti 1936). We
must perhaps assume that the spolia here were not made available
to the Renaissance builders of the new S. Peter's, for by this
time some at least was on Cesarini land: given their thirst for
materials, which included re-using small fragments collected
from all over Rome, as well as the tombs of the old basilica
(Respighi 1933), one might have imagined the work of sawing
blocks less arduous than that of laying various antiquities
face-down - having first polished their reverse sides. Yet, if
we believe Etienne du Pérac's view of the Marmorata (I Vestigi
dell'Antichità di Roma, Rome 1575, pl. 23), there were many
very large blocks available. Did Poussin, perhaps, find
inspiration here in the half-buried blocks and columns by the
water when he painted his Landscape with S. Matthew and the
Angel (Berlin) or his Landscape with S. John on Patmos
(Chicago)?


One problem, of course, is to know just what the stocks at the
Marmorata and at Ostia were at the fall of the Empire. They may
have been immense, if we accept Pensabene's suggestion (1972,
348ff.) that those at the former site, and those by Ponte S.
Angelo, were not in fact commissioned blocks destined for
specific projects, but rather a percentage of quarrying
production sent regularly to Rome to form some kind of Imperial
stockholding in this valuable commodity. This is perhaps
confirmed by the large quantities of especially rare marbles
found on these sites (e.g. Leotardi 1979). One example is the
two large blocks of giallo antico, with dedications to Domitian,
found in the remains of a sumptuous house outside Porta Marina
at Ostia: here, the blocks were to be cut for decorative
tessera, had not some accident - perhaps the roof fell in -
stopped the work (Becatti 1969, 22ff.). In other words, as
Becatti has underlined, decorators at work at Ostia in 393 were
using blocks of giallo antico quarried in Numidia three
centuries before, in the reign of Domitian.


Equally, it would be interesting to know (in greater detail
than any document can provide) just how the gangs of
marble-seekers went about their work. As we have seen, they left
behind uncut blocks, which may have been faulty, or in some way
difficult to deal with. But sometimes they seem to have made do
with second-class blocks, such as the dolphin frieze now in the
Camposanto, Pisa, which came from the Basilica of Neptune,
behind the Pantheon. The dolphins, a symbol taken over by the
Christians (Braun 1924, 1.351), evidently made the piece
suitable for the Duomo. That this piece was prized (architraves
frequently were: Esch 1969, 17f.) is clear, because the verso
was reworked c. 1130 so that it could be used as a
double-sided piece. However, Grisanti (1980, 183) has noticed
wear on the surface `which is reminiscent of long exposure in
the open air in a horizontal position' - wear which contrasts
with the pristine appearance of those sections of the same
frieze now re-erected on site. From which we might conclude
either that the gangs went only for the easiest pieces, or that
they lacked an eye for quality. Did dismounting large blocks
present too great a problem? Marble shortage is surely proved by
the vertical slicing of a cannellated column, and the cutting of
the flat face for intarsia work, for decorating the Duomo
façade at Pisa (Settis 1984A, no. 119).


Not that the best material was necessarily available on the
surface: robber trenches are a feature of many sites, but little
heed is usually paid to them, which is a pity. However, Simon
Pratt, digging (summer 1984) near the Temple of the Magna Mater
on the Palatine, has discerned four post-antique phases there.
The first (and lowest) consists of shallow diggings which do
little more than scratch the surface; the second is of mediaeval
walls, so far undateable, built precariously over a collapsed
Roman vault; the third is of tunnels, some of which appear to
have reached right down to river level; and the fourth of deep
pits. For Phase One, deep digging was clearly unnecessary for
the recovery of spolia - whereas Phase Three involved either the
mining of new tufo blocks or, more likely, the recovery of
building blocks from foundations (and some alarming lacunae have
been registered); and one of the tunnels still holds a large
architrave block, ruined by clumsy handling; other blocks,
bearing similar signs, are scattered throughout Rome and Ostia
(Adam 1984, 32ff.). The network of tunnels was presumably used
to convey the blocks down the hill to transport on the river.
Phase Four pits are believed to have been for the recovery of
smaller objects such as statues, and may therefore prove to be
Renaissance in date. Dating the four phases is difficult: the
tunnels contain Forum Ware, but the present uncertainty over its
dating means it is of little help.


Such sapping techniques, sometimes going under foundations
(e.g. Boyer 1963, 274) are, together with robber trenches on the
surface, a commonplace on most sites. They naturally worried
civic authorities, as can be seen from an authorisation of 1545
to hunt for stone `as long as buildings both ancient and modern
are not damaged by such a method of excavation' - a frequent
formula seen, for example, in a document of 1484 (Rodocanachi
1913, 177). The implications of the conditions attached are
clear: it was standard practice to burrow underneath standing
buildings, perhaps by breaking through cellar walls. The workers
must have known what treasures could be found at lower levels,
and the occasional collapsed structure must have been the result.


The systematic re-use of antiquities occurred very early in
cities which had their years of glory in the tenth to twelfth
centuries (such as Tivoli, Rieti or Anagni: cf. Toubert 1973,
660ff.), although much also post-dates the fifteenth century.
Thus Fra Girollamo, chronicling his city of Gubbio (1539, 98f.),
remarks how, outside the Gates of S. Agostino and S. Pietro
`have been found and are being found many beautiful ruins,
monuments and other tituli of stone' - and goes on to name
churches and other buildings which have been built using
materials from such ruins. This account explains why the city
possessed both a Porta Marmorea and a Borgo Marmorea, facing
down toward the plain and not far from the amphitheatre.


But it was for the great medieval expansions (before the
opening of convenient quarries) that the earlier fabric of
cities suffered. For the foundation of Grado, for example, the
chronicle tells the new city was built with spolia from the old
(Cessi 1933, 161). In later thirteenth-century Lucca, the
Statuto della Civia delle vie e dei pubblici (ch. 7) forbade
citizens `to cut, or quarry, to destroy, to obliterate, to break
up or to inhabit the public roads'. Although `lapides' can mean
newly quarried stone (as in a Statute of Perugia of 1279,
setting rules for quarrying stone: Nicolini 1971, 744), in this case
some of the `lapides' could have been antique, cut or scavenged
from existing buildings and ruins, for Cyriacus notes having
seen some set in the second set of walls, which were finished by
1265 (Bindoli 1931, 344f.). Perhaps the city fathers were
concerned for the integrity of the ditch with which they
surrounded the new walls for, if our hypothesis is correct, it
would be in precisely that area of Lucca that stones from
antique funerary structures would be available. At Tivoli,
Statute 78 of 1305 (Tomassetti 1910, 182) Quod nullus occupet
bona communis sibi includes `the paved roads, other stones,
and ditches', while Statute 256 De pena rumpentis lapides
communis (ibid., 232) declares that `nobody shall break up
... the squared stones at porta Obscura, at the tiled monuments
(or, possibly, `vaulted halls') by or near the road of the old
City'. Porta Obscura was the name for the structures of the Hercules
Victor temple complex; and since the Statute states that
material should not be taken without consular permission,
it presumably reflects an interest in conserving
building materials for public use, rather than any pride in
remains of antique monuments.


Occasionally, examination of actual remains can give hints
about how marble was selected in the Middle Ages. The Temple of
Mars Ultor on the Forum of Augustus in Rome was largely
dismantled in the Middle Ages, before the building of a convent
on the site. All but four of the massive cannellated columns
were easily removed, because they are in drums; some may have
collapsed of their own accord, for their fragments scatter the
site today. The white marble steps which led from ground level
on to the temple podium have also largely disappeared, and only
small sections of the exceptionally thick marble veneer
embellishing the sides of that podium survive. The cella walls
were also veneered, but that veneer was separated by bands of
marble string-courses which acted as ties through the whole
thickness of the (mainly tufo) walls: these marble
string-courses remain, because to get at them would have
involved taking down the walls in which they are set. So only
the veneer has gone, and post-holes still visible in the tufo -
and quite distinct from the smaller fixing holes for the veneer
itself - were probably made by the demolishers to support their
scaffolding. Given the difficulty of detaching veneer without
breaking it, we should not be surprised by the `jigsaw' use of
marble pieces throughout the Middle Ages.


Indeed, that veneer was particularly prized - being both
difficult to cut and most useful - is clear from the naked state
of the majority of antique internal walls in Rome and elsewhere
(although mediaeval masons did plank their own marble: Frankl
1960, 158, n. 111). Many buildings were robbed of their veneer
in Antiquity - as happened to most of the walls at Piazza
Armerina (Carandini 1982, 110). At Rome, the walls of the
Palatine palaces must have been a rich source. Unfortunately,
documented examples of despoiled veneers are late, such as the
Castel Sant'Angelo, where the veneer from the basement was taken
by Gregory XIII in 1578-9 for a chapel in S. Peter's (Cecchelli
1951, 37); or Milan, where the the marble veneers from the walls
and parts of the floor of the fourth-century Baptistery of
Sant' Ambrogio were neatly stripped when the structure was
demolished in the second half of the fifteenth century by the
builders of the new Cathedral - as can be determined by visiting
the (now underground) remains. Parts of the wall veneer must have
gone before that date, for one niche contained a
thirteenth-century fresco, and another a fifteenth-century one.
Veneer was also used, although in small quantities,
in the building of Canterbury Cathedral (Mortet 1911, 217; 226).
And did the coloured veneers in the tomb of Galla Placidia
survive into the eighteenth century (Swift 1951, 133) because
they were in a Christian building, or because of a preference
for white marble? Probably the former: compare the dado of the
Arena Chapel, where Giotto has frescoed pairs of panels of
`matched marble veneer', some strongly figured and sumptuously
coloured, to enhance the luxury of the chapel - perhaps one of
those `things which have been made there more for pomp,
vainglory and wealth than for praise, glory and honor of God',
as the Eremitani monks complained in 1305 (Stubblebine 1969,
107).

Bricks and tiles

The North

The prestige of marble and stone is in part dependent upon the
availability of Roman bricks and tiles, which are frequently
found in re-use all over Europe (Wade Martins 1980, 479ff.). For
example, the story of how the Abbot of S. Albans scavenged in
the ruins of Verulamium towards the end of the eleventh century
for bricks and other spolia (L-B England, nos 3792-3) is well
known - and verifiable, for these are still visible in the walls
of the abbey. Forsyth (1953, 25, n. 10) has identified
Merovingian bricks `of poor quality' on the site of S. Martin at
Angers, and sees `no need to assume that they are reused Roman
fragments'; so the brick industry may, like that for glass, have
been as slow to collapse as it was to revive. Information on
that revival is scarce, but it would seem that bricks and
roofing tiles were not usually made in the Middle Ages, until
about the twelfth century in south-west France, and about the
thirteenth century in Normandy, London and eastern England
(Bouard 1975, 55-6) - so that earlier brick constructions are
tentatively assumed to be in spolia (Durliat 1973, 216).
Pavement tiles seem to be a different matter, for Dom Coquet has
dated those found at Ligugé to the seventh century, and
Biddle has found tenth-century tiles in the excavations at
Winchester. Bouard (1975) notes that the evidence cited in
favour of the manufacture of bricks and tiles before the later
Middle Ages (such as Einhard's request to Egaundus asking for
260 `lateres', presumably for some kind of hypocaust) is
fragmentary. It is also inconclusive, but suggests manufacture
only of specialist items, as when the Abbot of S. Bénigne,
Dijon, decreed in about 1100 that each of his houses should
supply stock for building an abbey, including ten `tegulae'.
This must refer to specialised tiles, perhaps for capping, and
not to flat ones, of which far larger quantities would have been
required. Perhaps there was enough Roman brick to be had for
walls but (naturally enough) a dearth of capping tiles.


Shortage may have encouraged the use of brick and stone
together, which is common: Colchester Castle has bricks just for
the bonding courses - an old habit, as Nennius in his Historia
Britorum of the mid-ninth century also refers to `innumerable
castles built of stone and tiles' (Wight 1972, 20). However, the
best examples are indeed post-Conquest, such as St. Botolph's
Priory at Colchester, and the square tower of St. Alban's Abbey;
at the latter site, the chronicler notes that Paul (abbot
1077-93) built the whole church in tiles in eleven years -
whereas the eighth-century abbot Ealdred had used tiles only for
part of his work (ibid., 21). Any attempt to list those
buildings making any use of re-used material would be impossibly
lengthy - witness the fact that Essex Records Office lists no
less than 102 churches in the county in this category.


In those frequent cases where structures are placed on top
of Roman walls, the re-use of Roman bricks for the
superstructure is even more common, particularly if brick is the
traditional material in the locality: compare S. Martin at
Moissac, built on top of the hypocaust of a Roman villa, or S.
Sernin at Toulouse, where the previous church was also of brick,
possibly re-used. Although economic factors are sometimes
adduced for the use of brick, its total control from the
thirteenth century in the Toulouse region speaks rather of
traditionalism (Durliat 1973); although poverty explains
why S. Sernin also uses a poor-quality stone from the Haut Armagnac,
rather than better stone in the Pyrenees (which is as near to
Toulouse and certainly more accessible). It has been suggested
(Astre 1930) that this stone is re-used, possibly from the
Carolingian basilica once on the site, in which case it would
have been quarried towards the end of the Empire.


Evidence for trading in brick and tile is, as one might
expect, tenuous, but inferences might be possible from the
Graveney boat, which has a radiocarbon date of c. 944. In its
bottom were found fragments of Roman tile, and of Kentish
ragstone with fragments of mortar adhering (Fenwick 1978, 3;
173). Because fragments of Roman tile are still to be seen on
the foreshore (and there were Roman buildings nearby), the tile
may not have been carried in the boat; but it is likely that it
was, probably being taken from Rochester or London. (Equally,
the fragments could reflect the common practice among boatmen in
the ancient world and later of making cooking areas in bricks
or tiles.)

Italy

The situation in Italy is yet more complicated, for new bricks
were indeed produced in the Middle Ages. Bricks have been found
with the stamps of Theodoric and Athalaric; there are references
to bricks being made at Pavia in the time of Bishop Crispin
(521-41), and at Milan in the first quarter of the seventh
century (Bullough 1966, 103, n. 79). Bricks survive which are
certainly later, but undated; other newly made and stamped
bricks do survive from Farfa, Monte Cassino and S. Vincenzo al
Volturno, but they have yet to be dated. Benedict of Aniene says
his first monastery was covered `not with red tiles, but with
thatch', while the 772 rebuild was tile-covered (cf. Horn 1979,
1.176f.); but we do not know whether the tiles were newly made,
or whether he had located a supply of spolia. Tilers are
documented at Brescia in 841, at Piacenza in 1000, and at Milan
in 1017, and we must assume that they made tiles and did not
simply install them (Ballardini 1964, 237, n. 31; 251). In
Central and Southern Italy as well, the manufacture of plain
tiles before the thirteenth century appears to have been rare,
although `special orders' and decorated specimens were more
common, if perhaps confined to centres like Rome (Arthur 1983).
However, the plentiful documentary references to wooden roof
tiles perhaps reflect the lack of any large-scale and widespread
tile industry. In centres like Milan, what is more, with no
convenient source of building stone nearby, Roman tiles were
frequently re-used (Stenico 1968, n. 24), and there may well
be a continuous tradition of brick and tile manufacture there.
The thirteenth century saw a change: Viterbo, for example, has a
statute for tile manufacturers in 1251 (Federici 1930, 245).


Rome, as always, could be an exception, for so many of the
bricks in its mediaeval buildings are second-hand. This is
conspicuously the case in the periods of building growth of the
eighth and ninth centuries (Bertelli 1976-7), and as true of the
Leonine Wall protecting the Vatican as of the churches (Gibson
1979, 43). The quality of such brickwork in these centuries is
bad - conspicuously so even if compared with the walls of the
city of Rome (ibid., 55). New mediaeval bricks have not yet been
identified in buildings in Rome before the early twelfth century.


In spite of much research, then, it is still unknown just
how much brick production there was in the Middle Ages (cf.
Chapelot 1980, 323ff.). In many buildings, where old bricks
often jostle new ones, the position can be most confusing -
compare a recent account of the church at Brixworth, Northants
(where Roman tiles are indeed re-used) which asks `whether
perhaps the church-builders merely supplemented supplies of
bricks which they made themselves by robbing the adjacent ruins
- or even vice versa' (Everson 1977, 410). For the same site,
while there is clear evidence from thermo-luminescence that some
of the bricks tested are indeed of Saxon date, it is clear also
that the great majority of bricks not tested are uniform in
shape with those to be seen in the (Roman) Jewry Wall in nearby
Leicester.