Gothic Cathedrals :: Europe European Architecture Essays

Gothic CathedralsFor nearly four hundred historic period Gothic style dominated the architecture ofWestern europium. It originated in northerly France in the twelfth century, andspread rapidly across England and the Continent, invading the sr. Viking empireof Scandinavia. It confronted the Byzantine provinces of Central Europe andeven made appearances in the near East and the Americas. Gothic architectsdesigned town halls, royal palaces, courthouses, and hospitals. They fortifycities and castles to defend lands against invasion. But it was in the serviceof the church, the most prolific constructor of the Middle Ages, that the Gothicstyle got its most meaningful expression, providing the widest scope for the discipline of architectural ideas.Although by 1400 Gothic had become the universal style of construct inthe Western world, its creative heartland was in northern France in an landstretching from the royal domain around Paris, including Saint-Denis andChartres, to the region of the Champagne in the east and southward to Bourges.Within this restricted area, in the series of cathedrals construct in the course ofthe 12th and 13th centuries, the major innovations of Gothic architecture tookplace.The supernatural character of medieval religious architecture was givena special form in the Gothic church. Medieval man considered himself exclusively animperfect refraction of Divine Light of God, Whose Temple stood on earth, gibe to the text of the dedication ritual, stood for the Heavenly City ofJerusalem.3 The Gothic variation of this point of view was a cathedral sogrand that seems to derogate from the man who enters it, for space, light, structureand the plastic effects of the stonework are made to stupefy 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, besides also the general attitude of the peopleof that time. Gothic was not dark, massive, and contained homogeneous the olderRomanesque style, nevertheless light, open, and aerial, and its appearance in all partsof Europe had an enduring effect on the outlook of succeeding generations.Gothic architecture evolved at a time of profound social and economic tack in Western Europe. In the late eleventh and twelfth centuries mickle andindustry were revived, particularly in northern Italy and Flanders, and a lively medico brought about better communications, not only between neighboring townsbut also between far-distant regions. Politically, the twelfth century wasalso the time of the blowup and consolidation of the State.