[Illustration: _Miserere Seat in Wells Cathedral._] FOOTNOTES: [23] For an example of these see the house of Jaques Coeur (Fig. 7). [Illustration: {SCULPTURED ORNAMENT FROM WESTMINSTER ABBEY.}] CHAPTER VII. GOTHIC ARCHITECTURE IN CENTRAL AND NORTHERN EUROPE. GERMANY.--CHRONOLOGICAL SKETCH. The architecture of Germany, from the twelfth to the sixteenth centuries, can be divided into an early, a middle, and a late period, with tolerable distinctness. Of these, the early period possesses the greatest interest, and the peculiarities of its buildings are the most marked and most beautiful. In the middle period, German Gothic bore a very close general resemblance to the Gothic of the same time in France; and, as a rule, such points of difference as exist are not in favour of the German work. Late Gothic work in Germany is very fantastic and unattractive. [Illustration: FIG. 41.--ABBEY CHURCH OF ARNSTEIN. (12TH AND 13TH CENTURIES.)] Through the twelfth, and part of the thirteenth centuries, the architects of Germany pursued a course parallel with that followed in France and in England, but without adopting the pointed arch. They developed the simple and rude Romanesque architecture which prevailed throughout Europe in the tenth and eleventh centuries, and which they learnt originally from Byzantine artists who fled from their own country during the reign of the iconoclasts; and they not only carried it to a point of elaboration which was abreast of the art of our best Norman architecture, but went on further in the same course; for while the French and ourselves were adopting lancet windows and pointed arches, they continued to employ the round-headed window and the semicircular arch in buildings which in their size, richness, loftiness, and general style, correspond with early Gothic examples in other countries. This early German architecture has been sometimes called fully developed Romanesque, and sometimes round-arched Gothic, and both terms may be applied to it without impropriety, for it partakes of the qualities implied by each. The Church of the Holy Apostles at Cologne, and those of St. Martin and St. Maria in Capitolo, in the same city, may be referred to as among the best works of this class. Each of these has an eastern apse, and also an apsidal termination to each transept. The Apostles' church has a low octagon at the crossing, and its sky-line is further broken up by western and eastern towers, the latter of comparatively small size and octagonal; and under the eaves of the roof occurs an arcade of small arches. A view of the Abbey Church of Arnstein (Fig. 41) illustrates some of the features of these transitional churches. It will be noticed that though there is no transept, there are no less than four towers, two octagonal, and two square, and that the apse is a strongly developed feature.