NORMAN ARCHITECTURE. A style orig inated and chiefly used by the Normans. and a subdivision of Romanesque (q.v.) a ture, under which its principal monuments arc described. Soon after their conquest of the north of France, during whieh had indulged in wholesale burning of churches and monaste ries, the Normans began to rebuild religious structures on a larger scale, as a consequence of their conversion. They accordingly expanded the dimensions, chile to a great extent at first re taining the style of the buildings they found in France. They seem also to have borrowed some of their ideas from the Rhine, and from Lom bardy, especially the use of vaulting. They car ried the architecture of their province and of France with them to England with the Conquest, and even to South Italy, where they established a great kingdom in the eleventh century. The leading characteristics of their style were great size, simplicity, and massiveness. They adopted the old Basilieal plan of central and side aisles and semicircular apse, though the square apse was sometimes used in England toward the close of the style. They seized on the tower as a dis tinguishing feature. and developed it as their style progressed, placing one usually on each side of the facade. The ornaments are simple and of great variety; but the most common and dis tinctive are the zigzag, billet, chevron. nail-head, etc. The windows and doors are simple, with semicircular arched heads—the former without tracery. The tympanum of the door-arch is oc casionally filled with sculpture. The nave arches are carried on heavy single pillars in English examples, but more frequently, espe cially as the style advanced, on piers with shafts.
Owing to the great size of the buildings, the architects were unable at first to vault the main aisle, which, accordingly, had usually a wooden roof, the side aisles only being vaulted. In France, however, vaulting of the nave became common after 1100, though not in England.
The masonry was at first rude, the joints be ing large, and the stones hewn with the axe; but in the twelfth century the technique improved with the use of the chisel. The style prevailed from about the beginning of the eleventh eentury until the rise of Gothic in the thirteenth. There are many examples in Normandy, the churches at Caen being well-known buildings of the (late of William the Conqueror. The chapel in the white tower of the Tower of London is the ear liest example of pure Norman work in England. The development of vaulting in the French sec tion of the Norman school furnished the models for the development of the Gothic method of ribbed vaulting, while the English section re mained stationary and maintained itself longer than in France, until early in the thirteenth eentury. The Normans, while good builders, did little in sculpture, painting, or the minor arts.
BlinJoenArnr. The most important publica tion is Ruprich-Rohert, L'architceture normande (Paris. 1S54-90), which illustrates the principal buildings both in Normandy and in England. An even fuller illustration is given in Dehio and Retold, Kirchliehe Baukunst des .tbendlandes (Stuttgart, 1892).