Gothic Cathedrals :: Europe European Architecture Essays

Gothic CathedralsFor nearly four hundred years Gothic look dominated the architecture ofWestern Europe. It originated in northern France in the twelfth century, andspread rapidly across England and the Continent, invading the old Viking empireof Scandinavia. It confronted the Byzantine provinces of Central Europe andeven made appearances in the near due east and the Americas. Gothic architectsdesigned town halls, royal palaces, courthouses, and hospitals. They fortifiedcities and castles to defend lands against invasion. But it was in the serviceof the church, the most prolific builder of the Middle Ages, that the Gothicstyle got its most meaningful expression, providing the widest scope for thedevelopment of architectural ideas.Although by 1400 Gothic had become the universal style of building inthe Western world, its creative heartland was in northern France in an areastretching from the royal domain around Paris, including Saint-Denis andChartres, to the region of the Champa gne in the east and southward to Bourges.Within this restricted area, in the series of cathedrals built in the course ofthe 12th and 13th centuries, the major innovations of Gothic architecture tookplace.The supernatural character of medieval religious architecture was addicteda special form in the Gothic church. Medieval gay considered himself but animperfect refraction of Divine Light of God, Whose Temple stood on earth, fit in to the text of the dedication ritual, stood for the Heavenly City ofJerusalem.3 The Gothic interpretation of this point of view was a cathedral sogrand that seems to belittle the man who enters it, for space, light, structureand the plastic effects of the stonework are made to produce a visionary scale.The result of the Gothic style is distortion as there is no fixed set ofproportions in the parts. Such architecture did not only express the physicaland spiritual needs of the Church, but also the general posture of the peopleof that time. Gothic was n ot dark, massive, and contained like the olderRomanesque style, but light, open, and aerial, and its appearance in all partsof Europe had an enduring effect on the observation post of succeeding generations.Gothic architecture evolved at a time of profound social and economicchange in Western Europe. In the late eleventh and twelfth centuries trade andindustry were revived, particularly in northern Italy and Flanders, and a livelycommerce brought about better communications, not only between adjoining townsbut also between far-distant regions. Politically, the twelfth century wasalso the time of the expansion and consolidation of the State.