A Bishop of Two Peoples: William of St. Calais and the Hybridization of Architecture in Eleventh-Century Durham

摘要

That a bishop's chapel has functions different from those of a cathedral requires little explanation. The cathedral is large, formal, and public; the chapel is small and part of a residential complex. At Durham, the chapel was located within the castle's walled enclosure, used by the bishop and members of his household, and perhaps occasionally attended by diplomatic guests. One would not expect the two spaces, disparate in function and size, to be identical. However, the cathedral and chapel also have no commonalitiesin terms of either decoration or architecture. This is unusual, given the formal similarities between other pairings of cathedrals and bishops' chapels-for example, Reims Cathedral and the bishop's chapel there, built concurrently and probably by the same masons.Bishop William's commitment to Norman craftsmen and their style has been discussed with reference to his donation of manuscripts to Durham Cathedral. Likewise, the chapel's architecture and decoration project its Normanitas-the Norman identity of its patron, the bishop. The chapel's design is a private reminder that the bishop did not identify with the northern English people over whom he presided. As noted, the bishop had significant connections in Normandy, having been a young cleric and, later, a political exile there.