Charles McClendon’s recent book sets forth, perhaps for the first time in English, a substantial prehistory of medieval architecture from late Roman Antiquity through the “Dark Ages” and the Carolingian Renaissance. Ranging over nearly a half-millennium, he focuses on the period between 600 and 900 in explaining the roots of Romanesque architecture. A lavish scholarly apparatus includes a plethora of carefully placed photographic illustrations, many line drawings, and numerous measured ground plans that closely support the meticulously documented, well-written text. An eloquent celebration of a little-known era of architectural history that is plainly meant for the enjoyment and edification of students, scholars, and the general public, this volume should grace every serious library’s shelves, whether private or institutional.

A comprehensive introduction opens the two-part presentation of the origins of medieval architecture. The first part, “The ‘Dark Ages’” consists of four chapters: “The Legacy of Late Antiquity,” “The Roman Response to the Cult of Relics,” “Romanitas and the Barbarian West,” and “The Christianization of Anglo-Saxon England.” The second part, entitled “The Carolingian era” contains five chapters: “Symbols of the New Alliance,” “Aachen and Rome: The Poles of an Empire,” “Private Patronage and Personal Taste,” “The Monastic Ideal and Reality,” and “The Innovations of Later Carolingian Architecture.” Completing the text is the summarizing yet forward-gazing chapter, “Epilogue: The Architectural Contribution of the Early Middle Ages.”

Chapters are organized systematically, first introducing historical, biographical, and cultural data as a background to usually quite comprehensive architectural discussions of foremost and comparable buildings. The author’s highly detailed analyses of long-known architecture and more recently excavated building sites are well supported with reliable data and theoretical considerations. Also integral to his analyses is a profound knowledge of related critical literature and historical, architectural, archaeological, and literary issues. Reference to comparative works and the author’s informed judgments flow easily throughout the text. Conclusions for each chapter differ, although each lead the reader’s curiosity into matters addressed in the subsequent chapter.

The book’s principle themes are evident in its initial four chapters. The first is the historic importance of the city of Rome, whereby Constantine set major precedents with his support for early Christian architecture at the “Eternal City” (Saint John of the Lateran) and of funerary structures with special functions (St. Peter’s) in the outlying cemeterial precincts. Moreover, he extended imperial architectural patronage of Christianity to the lands of the eastern Mediterranean after 327. Both of these examples were followed by later kings and emperors.

A second theme involves McClendon’s concern with Rome’s response to the cult of relics. He extends and enriches previous discussions of Christian burial sites, while explaining Rome’s views of the cult of relics as “yet another important aspect of the legacy of late antiquity” (23). Observations and building activities are cited from church authorities including St. Ambrose from 383 and Pope Gregory the Great in the early 590s. From several crypts incorporated into Early Christian and Early Medieval churches throughout Europe and in North Africa, McClendon derives a principle that reversed former Roman practices: “whenever bodies of saints were involved” in the Latin West or the Greek East, “they were brought to the church and its altar” (26); and, “If in Rome the holy tomb could not come to the altar, the altar had to come to the tomb” (26; emphasis in original). This happened in Rome by the turn of the sixth to seventh century with broad consequences. For instance, Gregory the Great’s annular crypt at Rome’s St. Peter’s (ca. 590) was widely accepted soon after Rome reversed its early treatment of relics; consequently, the cult of relics quickly grew, spreading into the rest of Italy, then Gaul, and entered into Britain.

McClendon’s third primary theme occurred when Roman Christianity met with and overcame other beliefs, resulting in “the simultaneous and reciprocal process of the romanization of the barbarians” (35) that affected the latter’s building arts from the end of the sixth century on. This is seen at St. Martin’s basilica in Tours (457–488); “La Daurade” (507?) at Toulouse, based partly on some questionable data; the “Hypogee des Dunes” at Poitiers; the larger crypt at Jouarre’s St.-Paul’s (ca. 660–690s?); the well-preserved early medieval baptistery of Saint-Jean at Poitiers (fourth through eleventh centuries); and many Visigothic churches. Then from Visigothic Spain, Gallo-Roman and Merovingian Gaul, the focus shifts to Lombard Italy’s enigmatic little “Tempietto del Clitunno” north of Spoleto and the much larger S. Salvatore basilica at Spoleto, both probably from ca. 700, and the unique church of S. Sofia at Benevento from ca. 750, to cite but some few. From these and many more continental examples, along with studies of Anglo-Saxon England’s churches based upon surviving monuments, archaeological data, and the Venerable Bede’s Ecclesiastical History, McClendon recognizes that, “European architecture of the romanized barbarians . . . was the first architecture of . . . the Middle Ages” (58). He continues to state and prove that, “The intellectual, artistic, and architectural achievements of Northumbria in the seventh and eighth centuries had a profound effect on the development of early medieval Europe” (84).

The book’s second part begins with a chapter devoted to three indisputably major monuments of the “so-called” Carolingian Renaissance: the royal abbeys of St.-Denis (768–775) at Paris and St. Nazarius (764–774) at Lorsch, near Worms; the third is the remarkably well-preserved Lorsch “Torhalle” (gateway), a free-standing monument located near the western limit of Lorsch’s elongated rectangular atrium. Each is characterized as symbolizing the new alliance linking the Franks and papal Rome, discussed in ample detail, and considered as “transitional” in the group of early monastic churches under Charlemagne’s patronage. Partially acceptable theories explaining the form, iconography, stylistic context, and dates of origin of the Lorsch “Torhalle” are reconsidered, mostly rejected, and restated by the author: “In my view, the events of 774 were decisive, from . . . a formal and an iconographic point of view. September 1, 774, marked Charlemagne’s first and only visit to Lorsch” (101). Rather than concluding with this, McClendon poses a new hypothesis that Richbod, abbot of Lorsch from 784, also archbishop of Trier from 791, was most likely the designer of the Lorsch “Torhalle” around “either 784 or 794” to commemorate the tenth or twentieth anniversary of Charlemagne’s only visit to Lorsch.

Assessments of Charlemagne’s palaces at Paderborn and Ingelheim are detailed largely from twentieth-century excavations, and succeeded by an excellent, rewarding study of Aachen’s royal palace precinct. Begun by ca. 787, functional by 794, the king’s octagonal royal chapel and audience hall, 125 meters apart, were linked by a two-storied walkway with an interposed massive two-storied rectangular gatehouse. Buildings and insofar as possible their frescoes or mosaics are described down to the foot-measures. Derivations of their architectural designs are carefully weighed. Problematic aspects are explored, and from the enormity of the data available, the author poses speculative interpretations of the four great exedrae (and their decor) reconstructed in the oblong atrium fronting Aachen’s palace chapel, and explains their relationships with comparable buildings and manuscript illuminations. Ultimately the palaces at Paderborn, Ingelheim, and Aachen represent three successive phases of planning and design: from the simplicity of the northern Germanic outpost, to the classicism of Ingelheim (the king’s summer palace), to Aachen’s fuller adaptation of Roman and Holy Roman classicism in its buildings and cast-bronze detailing. New dimensions of Roman influence underlay much of the thought evident in the architectural concepts followed at Aachen. We learn in the next chapter (chapter 6) that Rome’s role at Aachen may best have been due to the influence of Charlemagne’s supervisor of works and later biographer, Einhard. Contacts between papal Rome and Aachen’s Frankish ruler, tenuous at times, remained mostly in effect until Charlemagne’s death in January of 814.

For this reviewer, chapter 7, with its focus on “private patronage and personal taste,” was perhaps the most fascinating in the volume. It characterizes Charlemagne’s court at Aachen as an early “think-tank,” names each of its members and describes their special qualifications, as they well knew they were “the founders of the Carolingian Renaissance.” Then recounting Theodulf of Orleans’s biography and intensively analyzing and interpreting his Orleans palace chapel and its famed mosaics, McClendon pays tribute to the chapel at Germigny-des-Pres “as a monument to Theodulf’s particular genius” (136). Turning to Einhard, McClendon shows that Einhard’s descriptions of his two churches are corroborated through observations of their appearance: one partially rebuilt at Steinbach (815–827) near Michelstadt, the other at Seligenstadt (830–840). In the examples of Einhard’s person, his reliquaries, and his churches, McClendon’s three principal themes are again clear: the historic importance of the city of Rome, the significance of the cult of relics, and “the simultaneous and reciprocal process of . . . romanization” (35), all of which are strongly supported by the data assembled in chapters 6 through 9.

As with Einhard, so with Theodulf; thus, McClendon asserts that their building activities “should be viewed in the context of contemporary developments at Rome” (142). He then concludes chapter 7 by updating a great deal of Richard Krautheimer’s famed article on the T-shaped basilica (“The Carolingian Revival of Early Christian Architecture,” The Art Bulletin 24 (1942), 3–38), bringing to this his own views on Carolingian Rome’s most meaningful mural programs.

The conceptual bases of chapter 7 are continued in chapter 8’s treatment of “the monastic realm.” After retracing monasticism as part of the “legacy of late antiquity” and seeing cloisters as the heart of Benedictine monasticism, McClendon’s lengthy reconsideration of St.-Riquier at Centula (790–799) details Honore Bernard’s most important on-site findings and reconstructions (1959 to 2002). More critical of Bernard’s efforts than seems merited, McClendon follows Bernard’s lengthening of Effmann’s long-accepted plan and his restructuring of abbot Angilbert’s church (erected with Charlemagne’s largesse). In size and complexity, McClendon rightly finds Centula “one of the great architectural achievements of the Carolingian age” (158), and reaches a similar conclusion for the very different abbey church at Fulda (late eighth to early ninth century) only after rigorously examining the evidence of Fulda’s special relationship to St. Peter’s at Rome. Both were considered by the Carolingians as resting places of apostolic saints. Fulda’s St. Boniface, the apostle to the Germans, emulated Rome’s St. Peter’s, the apostle to Rome and its peninsular.

There follows an interesting history, description, and assessment of the Carolingian Plan of St. Gall, tracing its formal sources, purposes, liturgy, problems of dating, and origins as well as its historic place in urban planning (see Warren Sanderson, “The Plan of St. Gall Reconsidered,” Speculum 60, no. 3 (1985): 615–632). Chapter 9 concerns late Carolingian “innovation,” particularly at Corvey-on-the-Weser’s monastic church (ca. 850) where an eastern outer crypt and a westwork (873–885) are placed in their Carolingian contexts. A genuine bonus here is an illuminating discussion of fresco fragments with classical themes recently uncovered in two levels of Corvey’s westwork. Chapter 10 summarizes McClendon’s achievements and looks beyond his terminal year of 900 to explore how Carolingian architecture may have influenced post-Carolingian, Ottonian, Romanesque, and even Gothic building. Despite this last chapter’s quickened pace and gradual attenuation of text, it creates a particularly attractive scaffold from which to reflect upon McClendon’s achievements.

Without doubt this volume has exceeded its author’s modest intention of studying “the architectural transition from late antiquity to the Middle Ages in the Latin West” (1). And it is surely much more than “an introduction to . . . medieval architecture” and “a guide to more specialized literature . . . for further research” (2). Instead, McClendon successfully brings the architectures of Late Antiquity, the “Dark Ages,” and the Carolingian Renaissance into a coherent whole within which each retains the identities of their separate originating circumstances. He deals with the roots of medieval architecture in an original manner. He also energizes the tenuous lines separating Late Antiquity and early Christianity, destroys the notion of the “Dark Ages,” and places in its obscuring stead continuous developments (or as he calls them, “origins“) that led to Carolingian recallings and inventions, and ultimately toward an architecture of the Middle Ages. A masterful read, this is a rare book that will delight inquiring minds.