A Bishop of Two Peoples:

Abstract

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.