In A Bishop of Two Peoples: William of St. Calais and the Hybridization of Architecture in Eleventh-Century Durham, Meg Bernstein considers England's Durham Cathedral alongside the nearly contemporaneous Norman Chapel, located in the bishop's palace adjacent to the cathedral. Both were commissioned by Bishop William of St. Calais, the second Norman-appointed bishop of Durham. Bernstein argues that the dramatically different formal styles of the two buildings reflect politically motivated choices the bishop made following the Norman cultural conquest of England after 1066. While the cathedral is recognizably hybrid, recalling Anglo-Saxon formal motifs applied to a Norman plan, the castle chapel draws straight from the milieu of the duchy of Normandy. In particular, the chapel's stone capitals were most likely made in Normandy and brought to England by the bishop. This article seeks to provide context for the cathedral where it has been lost and to draw conclusions about the chapel's commission within the context of the Norman colonization of England.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.