Gothic Age Essay, Research Paper

The Gothic Age

Introduction

The Gothic Age

As the third year that followed the year on thousand grew near, there

was to be seen over almost all the earth, but especially in Italy and in Gaul, a

great renewal of church buildings; each Christian community was driven by a

spirit of rivalry to have a more glorious church than the others. It was as if

the world had shaken itself, and casting off its old garments, had dressed

itself again in every part in a white robe of churches.

Raoul Glaber, Historia, c.1003

The Gothic Age (c. AD 1130-1530) marked the end to an age of chaos,

primarily caused by the sacking and pillaging of the Vikings. After the great

minds of Western Europe were freed from using their vast knowledge to defend

against invaders or plagues, they now had the time and the resources needed to

design any and everything in this era from bridges to city walls and castles to

cathedrals. This was also a very religious age, with plenty of money being

pumped into the Church, some from the crusades, with all of its included

looting, and a lot more from all of the tithes all of the people who were born

in the population explosion gave faithfully. Another even bigger source of

income for the Church came to it in the shape of power and prestige, when the

power of the church peaked in AD 1277.

Not only was this a good time for the Church, but this was also a very

good time for all of humanity. The standard of living dramatically rose, and

along with it, the population of Western Europe shot up. In 1346, the estimated

population of Europe was fifty-four point four million just before the plague

hit and wiped out more than a third of the population.1 2 This was more than

twice the population of Europeans in the year 950 when it was 22,600,0003 .

While the population was exploding there were so many new cathedrals

built that in the relatively short time period of two hundred and fifty years,

there was more stone quarried to be used in cathedrals (several million tons)

than was quarried during the age of the pyramids in Egypt, where there are

pyramids that are over two hundred and fifty million cubic meters big.4

The Gothic age survived many crusades, a plague that didn?t leave Europe

until the late 18th century, and many other horrible atrocities. Following this

great age, there was a period without the great accomplishments as in this age,

since everyone was just happy using what their forefathers had done. If not for

this age, we would today be without many of our modern conveniences, so I firmly

believe that this age was essential to modern day living.

Body of Knowledge

Gothic Architecture

Anyone who has ever walked into a true Gothic cathedral knows how much

of an impact one can have on a person . The sheer magnificence of it will shut

even the noisiest of tourists up. One can only imagine the impact seeing such a

place would have on a person who has never had the opportunity to see one of the

great wonders of the modern world, such as a skyscraper. The name alone is

enough to bring visions of grandeur, or Las Vegas, a place known for its flashy

style and glitz. Just think what a person who has never seen either one of

these places, or any place anything like it, would think when they saw a choir

with a roof so high a fourteen story building could fit in there* and not even

touch the rafters.5 And Imagine what you would think of a stadium that was so

large it could hold one million people (the largest one today holds a “mere”

forty-two thousand people1). This is what Ameins Cathedral was like when it was

built. The entire town of ten thousand people could fit into it all at the same

time to go to the same mass. It had a floor that was seven thousand, seven

hundred square meters.

New Ideas in the Cathedral that Reflected Christianity

There were many aspects about Gothic cathedrals that reflected the then

modern-day ways of life, such as how a common belief in those times was that the

closer you were to God, the holier you were. The architects would build huge

spires and high ceilings which would make the building look absolutely massive.

Another clever technique of the time was to create picture stories on the

windows with stained glass since the vast majority of the people couldn?t read

or write to help the common folk learn the Bible without having someone read it

to them.

-Walls

The walls in a Gothic cathedral were way ahead of the walls in the style

that preceded Gothic, Romanesque. The walls in Gothic were thin and had a lot

of stained glass in them, not to mention the fact that the new style was a lot

higher. The reason that the architect could put up thinner, higher walls was

because of two new inventions, the flying buttresses and ribbed vaults. The

latter of the two, ribbed vaults, sounds simple enough, but it is effective and

ingenious enough to have earned a place in history. All they really are, are

supports that go from corner to corner like rafters, although, unlike rafters,

they are up against the actual ceiling, therefore putting the weight on the

corners and, at the same time, effectively supporting the ceiling.

The former of the two inventions, flying buttresses, was also very

important, since they, like the ribbed vaults, allowed the architect to build

the walls thinner and higher, but it also supported the weight of the walls and

the roof. Flying buttresses are basically kickstands that rest up against the

side of a cathedral, giving it a wider base, and, a lot like an arching bridge,

they put equal pressure from two opposite sides on a keystone.

-Stained Glass

“[Stained glass windows were] …a bearer of holy images, an

intrinsically rich material resembling valuable stones, and a mystery, because

it glowed without fire.” -Abbot Sugar

It was very common in this day for a person not to know how to read, and

there was also a great burden on the Church for the villagers to know basic

important scriptures, so there had to be pictures on the wall. Since one can

only go so far using frescoes, paintings and other ways to portray a picture,

stained glass was an interesting alternative. Before since the walls were

thicker and build more as a means to support the high ceilings, stained glass

never really was an option, but now with the help of the two previously

mentioned means of support, the walls could be made thinner so glass also could

be used now.

-Spires

The function of spires goes far beyond just being there for the

appearances, since the church bells are kept in the spires. These bells would

tell the town what to do, as in time to go to church, time to eat and among many

other different things, time itself, and could be heard clearly throughout the

entire town.

Even though spires were present before the beginning of the Gothic age,

this was the first time they could be built so high, thanks to flying buttresses

and ribbed vaults.

Cathedrals

When funds were readily available, cathedrals didn?t take very long to

build, usually two stages,? although, some times, it took as many as two hundred

years. The fastest, though was Chartes, which was built in exactly twenty seven

years.6

My Two Favorites

There were many different cathedrals built in the Gothic age, but I

think that the two most important ones are the cathedral at Notre-Dame in France,

and Abbot Sugar?s masterpiece, St. Denis, which was mentioned previously for its

tremendous size.

Notre Dame of Paris is famous because it was the first cathedral to use

flying buttresses as a means of support, 7 and it also was known for its

incredible detail. It has many spectacular figures carved into the stone

covering its famous portholes. Notre Dame also has some very famous Rose

windows, which show the lines of ancestry (the begating) in the Bible

The St. Denis cathedral is famous for its prodigious size, and the fact

that it was the first cathedral to use ribbed vaults. I also really admired the

architect of St. Denis, Abbot Sugar, because I agreed with a lot of his points

of view on cathedral design. One such example can be found in the quote that I

used above, about the stained glass. I totally agree with him that point,

because I think cathedrals used to have a strong foundation in first

impressions; that if you want your cathedral to make the money necessary for

upkeep, you must be willing to impress whomever will be going to the church.

Conclusion

At one time in France, there were over eighty cathedrals, or in other

words, a cathedral for every two hundred people. All of these cathedrals being

built, not only in France, but also all over Western Europe, needed a lot of

stone, and most of it came from France. In fact, by the end of this era, there

was so much stone quarried out of Northern France, that the only way to get the

rocks needed to build a cathedral, they had to get their bricks from old, run

down cathedrals and castles.

A Wonderful Time For the Church

The reason, I think that there were so many cathedrals, not just as a

whole, since the amount per capita is just as staggering, was because this was a

great time for the church. As I said before, there were no shortages in men and

money to build cathedrals, so the only difficulty was just getting your hands on

this money.

A Wonderful Time For Mankind

Besides all of the advances in the field of architecture, there also

were a great deal of inventions for the everyday man. Inventions that greatly

increased the standard of living, and eating habits.

Reasons for this Being such a Wonderful Age In the Gothic Era, now that there

was a high standard of living, the commoners were a little bit closer to being

equal with the nobles, which I think was the most important breakthrough that ”

“broke through” in this age.

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