Villard de Honnecourt

 Much of what we know about medieval building techniques is due to the so-called sketchbook of Villard de Honnecourt.  We know very little about Villard himself, other than his name, and the fact that he lived in northern France in the thirteenth century.  But his sketchbook (perhaps better called a "portfolio"), is packed full of drawings of details of the buildings going up around him.  It also includes images of people, animals, siege engines (catapults and trebuchets) and an idea for a perpetual motion machine.

The image above shows a detailed rendering of a clock tower.

The portfolio is divided into several sections, sculpture, architectural features, masonry, and so on.  However, it is clear that some pages that were originally part of it are missing.  Architectural historians now think that the missing section was on carpentry.  Nonetheless, the parts that we do have include so much detail on how pieces of wood can be used and how they are attached together that it seems likely that Villard himself was primarily a carpenter.

The portfolio is a great boon to historians of medieval architecture, because we basically now have 800 year old buildings that have had 800 years of rebuilding and "improvement," so that it's almost an archeological exercise to figure out all the original details.  But Villard gave us, for example, the layout/floor plan of Cambrai cathedral while it was still being built, so we know exactly what the original architect intended.

Modern builders can also learn thirteenth-century techniques from the portfolio.  There are a number of sketches of Reims cathedral, which was brand new at the time.  The detailed drawings would have been a boon to the builders restoring the cathedral after it was gutted during World War I.

Other aspects of the portfolio pique our interest for different reasons.  He included a drawing of a lion (with a sketch of a porcupine off to the side).

In the caption Villard notes that he has drawn the lion "from life."  Okay, we ask, where did someone hanging out in northern France see a lion?  One has to assume it was in a cage, or Villard, standing right in front of it with his parchment and pen, wouldn't have been able to do a nice drawing.  Most likely this lion had been captured in Africa (maybe as a cub?) and sent along the trade routes until it ended up with some rich person, who kept it as a curiosity.  There were plenty of heraldic lions in the Middle Ages, used as signs of boldness and strength, but they didn't look as concerned as this lion seems to (and I'm not at all sure lions have eyebrows).

And let's not forget his perpetual motion machine, where a series of mallets would theoretically keep a wheel turning indefinitely once it was given a push.  (In fact it would not have worked in the thirteenth century any better than it would now.)

The portfolio is available in facsimile with commentary by Carl F. Barnes, The Portfolio of Villard de Honnecourt (Ashgate, 2009).

© C. Dale Brittain 2025

For more on medieval art and architecture, see my ebook, Positively Medieval:  Life and Society in the Middle Ages.  Also available in paperback.

The Restoration of Notre Dame

 In April of 2019, the roof beams of Notre Dame cathedral in Paris caught fire.  The flame roared through the 900 year old oak beams that supported the lead roof, sending particles of lead throughout the neighborhood and threatening to collapse the whole structure.  As Parisians watched in horror, the nineteenth-century spire that had risen above the crossing crashed down through the church's stone vaulting.

 

At the time there was fear that it might never be restored or might, like Reims cathedral (bombed in World War I) take decades to repair.  President Macron promised it would be rebuilt in time for the 2024 Olympic Games, to be held in Paris.  The restoration efforts didn't quite make the Games, but the cathedral has now reopened, just in time for Christmas 2024.

It helped that the church was not nearly as badly damaged as Reims had been.  Other than at the crossing, where the spire had come down, the stone vaulting (the ceiling you might call it, with all the oak beams and the roof above it) had mostly survived.  The church's interior was damaged by smoke and water but was mostly still there, unlike at Reims, which had been left as a shell after the bombing.

It also helped that a concerted search through Europe's forests (including eastern Europe) was able to find and obtain enough tall oaks to replace the twelfth-century beams.  (Many had been planted two centuries ago with the thought that they would become ships' masts, but steam replaced sail before they were used.)  In spite of some talk in 2019 of redoing the cathedral with an exciting new 21st-century "look," the decision was made to restore the church more or less to how it had been before the fire.  That meant not only using oak beams rather than steel but repairing the stonework (including the vaulting) using medieval techniques.

A major role here was played by craftsmen who had been working on Guédelon Castle.  As I've noted before, this is a project where modern people are attempting to build a medieval castle using medieval techniques and finding it more of a challenge than they anticipated.   But some medieval techniques they've worked out via trial and error, looking at how real medieval castles are put together, others they've found in late medieval handbooks.  At any rate, craftsmen who've developed a good feel for wood and stone played a major role in Notre Dame's reconstruction.

 

Notre Dame reopened in a grand ceremony attended by international dignitaries.  The interior especially looks strikingly different than it did six years ago, being limestone white rather than smoke-stained gray (from centuries both of candle smoke and more recently coal residue from the heating system).  One can see why thirteenth-century visitors to Paris were stunned by the cathedral.

But other aspects have been restored to the nineteenth-century standard,  including a new spire to replace the one erected by Viollet-le-Duc that crashed through the vaulting, and also including the gargoyles and the rather insipid heads of the queens and kings of the Old Testament, depicted on the front.  Some new things have been added, like the sprinkler system (good idea!).  But overall one can now enter the church and imagine oneself back in the thirteenth century.

© C. Dale Brittain 2024

For more on churches and other aspects of life in the Middle Ages, see my book, Positively Medieval, available from Amazon and other ebook platforms.  Available both as an ebook and in paperback.