Gotic Cathedrals

The Gothic age was a time of overwhelming change in the area of architecture. The origin of intellectual and religious life consumed definitively from monasteries to cities, making gothic art much more democratic. Art had to also serve a dictatic purpose during a time where few people could read or write (Norwich 114).

Italian Renaissance writers originally used the word gothic as a derogatory term for all architects and artists in the middle ages, which were compared to the works of the barbarian Goths. Although now the Gothic Age is considered Europe’s internationally acclaimed, it began as a regional phenomenon (Kleiner 488). The gothic style was first recognized in northern France around 1140 A.D., during the last major medieval period, immediately following the Romanesque period. Gothic art would dominate European architectural development for nearly four hundred years (Gothic Dreams 1). These advances that were made in the cathedrals were regarded not as distortions of the classical style, but as images of the City of God, the Heavenly

loveliest works of man,” (Norwich 118). The early gothic period was somewhat complex and experimental, but the style was simplified with the reconstruction of the new Chartres Cathedral in High Gothic Style. The architect established a profound division of the interior that was later adapted in all later gothic cathedrals. The lower parts of the massive west towers at Chartres are all that survived the fire in 1194 before being completed (Kleiner 490). Rising above the town, has interior height of one-hundred twenty-one feet, and six inches, two towers at the west end, and a spire over the south tower, completed in 1160 is on of the earliest true spires in Europe. It is a beautiful uncluttered octagon, which makes a skillful transition from its square tower, then climbs to a perfect point (Norwich 118). The cathedral has one hundred seventy-six windows with twenty-six thousand square-feet of which still have their original thirteenth century Medieval –glass. John Ruskin a Victorian art critic called ‘flaming jewellery,’ one of the most moving visual experiences to be had anywhere (Norwich 118).

“The high vault, functionally so unnecessary, was mainly responsible for the cathedral taking the particular form that they do,” (Norwich 115). A new spirit had been leashed: less cloistered and introspective, more confident and optimistic. These churches

Gothic style was introduced through the French monastic orders into England. William of Sens was invited to rebuild the Canterbury Cathedral after fire destruction in 1174, which lead to a new style from the English. The English Cathedrals are far less compact spatially; the emphasis is on length, rather than width or height. Small chapels were on the eastern sides of the trancepts or placed within the body of the church; and west fronts were designed as screens, the first phase of English Gothic is often referred to as springtime of the style with a fresh almost severely classical approach in its simplicity. “Salisbury Cathedral, here the light elegance of the Early English Style is seen at its purest, is the only English Gothic Cathedral built as a single unit on a virgin

Were symbols of civic pride, and for the first time since the very beginning of Christian art, an appreciation of nature. The growth of towns particularly in France, as they became more prosperous, wanted their own churches, churches that were different from the abbeys.

site,” (Norwich 121). Fifty years before the Black Death of 1348-9 was a brilliant period of architecture in England. Money was flowing, the country was prosp

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