Page 255 - Western Civilization A Brief History, Volume I To 1715 9th - Jackson J. Spielvogel

long, round stone vault called a barrel vault or a cross vault where two barrel vaults intersected (a vault is simply a curved roof made of masonry). The barrel vault was used when a transept was added to create a church plan in the shape of a cross. Although barrel and cross vaults were technically difficult to construct, they were considered aesthetically pleasing and techni- cally proficient. They also had fine acoustics.
Because stone roofs were extremely heavy, Roman- esque churches required massive pillars and walls to hold them up. This left little space for windows, mak- ing Romanesque churches quite dark inside. The mas- sive walls and pillars gave these churches a sense of solidity and a look reminiscent of a fortress.
The Gothic Cathedral
Begun in the twelfth century and brought to perfection in the thirteenth, the Gothic cathedral remains one of the great artistic triumphs of the High Middle Ages. Soaring skyward, as if to reach heaven, it was a fitting symbol for medieval people’s preoccupation with God.
Two fundamental innovations of the twelfth century made Gothic cathedrals possible. The combination of ribbed vaults and pointed arches replaced the barrel vault of Romanesque churches and enabled builders to make Gothic churches higher than their Romanesque counterparts. The use of pointed arches and ribbed vaults created an impression of upward movement, a sense of weightless upward thrust that implied the energy of God. Another technical innovation, the flying buttress, basically a heavy arched pier of stone built onto the outside of the walls, made it possible to dis- tribute the weight of the church’s vaulted ceilings out- ward and downward and thereby eliminate the thick, heavy walls used in Romanesque churches to hold the weight of the massive barrel vaults. Thus, Gothic cathe- drals could be built with thinner walls that were filled with magnificent stained-glass windows, which created a play of light inside that varied with the sun at differ- ent times of the day. The preoccupation with colored light in Gothic cathedrals was inspired by the belief that natural light was a symbol of the divine light of God.
The first fully Gothic church was the abbey church of Saint-Denis (san-duh- NEE) near Paris, built between 1140 and 1150 at the inspiration of Suger (soo- ZHAYR), the monastery’s famous abbot. A product of northern France, the Gothic style had spread by the mid-thirteenth century to England, Spain, Germany, and virtually all the rest of Europe. The most brilliant Gothic cathedrals were still to be found in France—in Paris (Notre-Dame), Reims, Amiens, and Chartres.
A Gothic cathedral was the work of an entire community. All classes of society contributed to its construction. Money was raised from wealthy townspeople, who had profited from the new trade and industries, as well as from kings and nobles. Master masons, who were both architects and engineers, designed the cathedrals, drew up the plans, and super- vised the work of construction. Stonema- sons and other craftspeople were paid a daily wage and provided the skilled labor to build the cathedrals. A Gothic cathe- dral symbolized the chief preoccupation of a medieval Christian community, its
The Gothic Cathedral. The Gothic cathedral was one of the great artistic triumphs of the High Middle Ages. Shown here is the cathedral of Notre-Dame in Paris. Begun in 1163, it was not completed until the beginning of the fourteenth century.
The Intellectual and Artistic World of the High Middle Ages 217
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