AS CATHEDRALS grew in stature and significance, so they grew, too, in size and appearance. Despite the Roman inheritance, the great age of cathedral-building in Europe’s Middle Ages would become associated, stylistically, with something quite different, summed up in a single word: Gothic.
Not that anyone called it that at the time. The first explicit reference to “Gothic” did not emerge until the 17th century, in the context of discussing pointed arches. But in the 16th century, critics, particularly those in Southern Europe, were already scoffing at an architectural approach identified with the barbarians of the Germanic lands who had overthrown the culture of Ancient Rome in the fourth to fifth centuries.
In 1550, the Florentine “Father of Art History” himself, Giorgio Vasari, lambasted the style as “monstrous, barbarous, and disorderly”, whose “vulgarity” contrasted starkly with Greek and Latin sources. In reality, Gothic had nothing to do with Goths. But, as a malleable category, implying a coherent set of stylistic approaches and the era in which they thrived, “Gothic” retains its potency and currency. Indeed, it is somewhat inseparable from our very image of a cathedral.
Gothic encompassed the high point of cathedral-building in medieval Christendom, in what is often called the “Age of Faith”, as represented by the twin institutions of the Roman Catholic Church (in the West) and the Eastern Orthodox Church.
Its periodic sweep is imprecise, but roughly it manifested itself from the early 12th century — first in northern France — and held ground for about four centuries, the very pinnacle of its construction arguably transpiring between 1140 and 1280.
Of course, the Gothic style did not explode, fully formed. Much had been percolating for some time, and medieval masons, travelling from project to project, were far from resistant to stylistic borrowings and intermingling.
In many respects, what we think of as Gothic emerged, in its northern French crucible, as a cultural reaction against the perceived oppression and brutality of the Norman-ruled lands to the north, before the conquering Normans themselves embraced it, and before it spread to all corners of Christendom.
But implicit in the idea of Gothic was the creation of buildings of hope and ambition rather than tyranny. Gothic elements combined light, height, space, colour, and materials to produce, in delicate structures, an unparalleled spiritual and experiential splendour for embodying the basic concepts of the divine, man, and the universe.
THERE is a fairly standard narrative of the advent of Gothic. As it proclaimed its new era, it usurped the “Romanesque” — that solid, robust, earthbound architecture indebted to the classical antecedents of the Roman world. Much that was Romanesque remained, even if spun into a more generous conception of interior space and overall monumentality. At the heart of Romanesque building was the round arch, largely based on the mathematics of a circle, and often a full semicircle in appearance.
That was until one French visionary, who has, for the past century or so, been credited with discovering a novel design (or, at least, with taking advantage of a breathtaking new way of building) to match his spiritual and aesthetic agenda. That was Abbot Suger, of the Abbey Church of St-Denis, located just a few miles north of Paris.
Suger commanded a significant place in the political and royal scene; so it was no surprise that, as he carried out his church’s renovation from 1137, he did so in a style that proclaimed its central importance to the still fledgling French realm of the Capetian kings. Suger’s (and his builders’) quest for innovation resulted in, among other things, the pointed arch also known as an “ogive” or arc brisé (“broken arch”, i.e., from two arched segments).
It was both stronger and more flexible than the round-arch method. The world had seen it before — indeed, it may well have been in widespread use in the Sasanian era (224-651) of the Persian Empire. Rediscovered in the 12th century, it allowed buildings to be raised to once impossible heights, in a new era of expectation where nothing under 330 feet (100m) would be considered fitting enough for the infinite power of God to pervade the structure.
Yet the true picture is more complex. For years, on English, Irish, Italian, Scandinavian, and Spanish soil, simple unadorned lines adorned Cistercian monasteries, as builders applied pointed arches and plain mouldings to thick Romanesque structures; and the Iberian Peninsula was full of the complex and bullish structures of Islamic and Moorish masons — all unaware that they were missionaries of the elements of a so-called “Gothic” style.
In reality, the cathedrals of the Middle Ages were a mélange of imitation and invention, and St-Denis was merely the earliest assemblage of the component parts that we would call “Gothic”. Suger may well be the father of Gothic, but it never belonged to him.
Rather than pure Gothic innovators, there were builders combining a collection of established techniques towards a “unified whole”, as Suger himself implied. That much was new. And a thirst for innovation and rivalry continued to propel ever more dangerous and extreme schemes.
AS THE Gothic style progressed, two of its important aims — maximum height and light — required fundamental reinforcement. The tall lancet window brought light; but windows are often structurally weak. To achieve soaring vertical extension, while still creating the impression of lightness and delicacy, something else was required. It arrived in the form of the flying buttress, whose arched supports, like outstretched limbs, came to line the exterior of Gothic cathedrals.
With flying buttresses, walls could continue to climb, and expansive stained-glass windows could be inserted in them, to illuminate the interior and to inspire worshippers and clergy alike in their often segregated areas — as many parts of a cathedral, particularly the more easterly ones, were usually closed to the lay faithful except on major feast days.
Another archetypal feature of Gothic — the stone rib-vaulted roof made up of small diagonal arches — started modestly (in terms of height) at St-Denis. As its sophistication grew, it became possible to build ceilings bigger, higher, and stronger than before.
Although Suger’s master mason is unknown to us (whether by chance or purpose), between mason and abbot this new combination of styles was shaped so that, as Suger put it, “the dull mind rises to truth through that which is material” — words so compelling that he had them emblazoned on the gilded doors of St-Denis.
Suger was not simply after something bigger and grander. He possessed a spiritual aim — a theological rationale — by which the work of his masons and engineers could produce something capable of conducting the soul towards contemplation of the divine.
For the abbot, light itself functioned as a sign and expression of the Holy Family, and the desire to get closer to the “one true light”, Jesus Christ, was achieved through heightened architecture and ample luminosity, augmented by brightness, glitter, and gold. In seeing these radiant spaces permeated with lux nova (new light), as Suger coined it, “the dull mind” would be resurrected from darkness.
Suger described the architecture that he oversaw as “modern” (opus modernum). In some ways, it was specifically French; so others dubbed it opus francigenum — “French work”. Either way, it proliferated, reaching its peak, in France, in the 13th century, and moving beyond, too.
GOTHIC stretched across the English Channel, where it infiltrated Norman and native building styles to produce an “English” variation of Gothic; and then it spread across Christian Europe, pushing the limits of technology, invention, and experimentation to produce skyscrapers of glass and stone which would dominate their landscapes.
Some were large enough to house an entire city’s population. Underneath the explosion of cathedral-building was an enterprise sustained by kings, church chapters, abbots, nobles, and even the lowest rungs of the social ladder, who together created an expansive infrastructure.
The organisation of manpower (and womanpower) was akin to a well-run metropolis. For each cathedral, a hierarchy existed, but it was not entirely rigid. At the ecclesiastical apex was the bishop or archbishop, but — in a “secular” cathedral — almost as powerful was the dean.
Below him was the chancellor (the “admin” of the group), then treasurer (the money man), and, finally, the chapter: the priests and other officials appointed to maintain the cathedral’s goings-on — and it was they who predominantly took control of the cathedral’s fabric.
Monarchs, clergy, burghers, and peasants shared similar spiritual beliefs and practices, and all made significant contributions to the building process. At the same time, in the medieval period there were very clear demarcations in roles.
Among those actually working on construction, the ones with the greatest status and skill were known as an artifex (skilled worker) or magister (master); then there was the caementarius (mason), who took on the bulk of the work, including engineering, hiring, materials, and managing construction; and then the lathomus (stonecutter) or wardens (custos, gadianus, apparator, aparillator).
The description architectus (architect) was not used in the Middle Ages. It was in England where different types of stone workers were distinguished with the greatest precision, and here it is easier to determine those who worked with hard stone (“hard hewers”) from those who worked on softer stone for detailed and ornate decoration (“freestone masons”).
The latter term spawned “Freemason”, although in cathedral-building cities they were also often independent masters “of the guild”, who had apprentices. There were also the “rough masons”: lesser-skilled workers who hacked away at the stone and rubble. Collectively, these were the literal cathedral-builders.
CATHEDRAL-BUILDING was by no means a male-only endeavour. Although, in the scholarship to date, there is a deafening silence about the part that women played, the archives do tell another story, if only in glimpses.
Women laboured on construction sites across Europe; and of course, higher-status or aristocratic women were often patrons. Although some women held specialised roles, such as carpenters and masons, more often their tasks were menial compared with their male counterparts’. Many day-labourers or workshop forewomen were charged with lugging water pails and provisions, digging ditches, or working as bricklayers’ and stonemasons’ assistants.
We do not find women acting as “masters” of any craft; but those belonging to the aristocracy could influence the design of a project or manage their own site.
At the heart of every cathedral’s building workshop, though, was usually the master mason (or master of works), and quite often successive master masons. Many of these gifted craftsmen would never see the fruition of their labours, for such was the long duration of cathedral building.
A cathedral such as Chartres, whose main Gothic substructure was technically complete within 26 years, or Salisbury, which was done in just under 40 years (excluding its tower/spire), was an anomaly in terms of cathedral-building timescales. Generally, the task was the work of generations; and some cathedrals, like Cologne, left the Middle Ages behind entirely before arriving at “completion”. The Gothic Age could be very long indeed.
How to sum up Gothic? It was, in essence, a response to the drive for something new at a time when the Latin West was thriving, and when its religious institutions sat at the very heart of commercial and economic life. The art historian Paul Frankl called it “componential”; in fact, Gothic was a result of groups of people slowly adopting fashionable and popular trends in construction and engineering as they yearned to get closer to God, and thus build their own little slice of paradise on solid ground, in his image. The result, though, turned out to be a revolutionary amalgam — and it changed the history of Western architecture for ever.
This is an edited extract from Heaven on Earth: The lives and legacies of the world’s greatest cathedrals by Emma Jane Wells, published by Head of Zeus at £40 (Church Times Bookshop £36); 978-1-78854-194-7.