6.2 Gothic Origins

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From the course by Yale University

Age of Cathedrals

105 ratings

Yale University

Age of Cathedrals

105 ratings

An introduction to some of the most astonishing architectural monuments the world has ever known—Gothic cathedrals. We shall study the art, literature, intellectual life, economics, and new social arrangements that arose in the shadow of the cathedrals and that were such an important part of the revival of cities in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. The goal of the course is a better appreciation of the High Middle Ages, a world that is still recognizably our own.

From the lesson

Architectural Innovation

Filling in the background of Romanesque churches that preceded Gothic buildings, we discuss the origins and engineering innovations of the new style of religious architecture. These include ribbed vaults, reinforced pillars, pointed arches, flying buttresses, and a modular system of bay construction; all of which permits the construction of higher and lighter, thinner walls filled with stained glass.

6.1 Romanesque6:43

6.2 Gothic Origins3:50

Meet the Instructors

Howard Bloch
Sterling Professor of French
French

Gothic cathedrals, unlike Romanesque,

are an urban phenomena,

an opening to a wider world,

part of nation-building in 12th century France,

about which we all have more to say later.

But Gothic was also an international style.

We find Gothic cathedrals in England, Italy, Spain,

Germany, the Lowlands, even Central Europe, and Scandinavia.

But primarily, in France.

And in France, primarily in the Ile-de-France, the Parisian basin.

The great art historian, Henri Focillon,

wrote that "Gothic is the Romanesque of the Ile-de-France."

The Gothic style is associated with some 80 cathedrals and

almost 500 abbeys estimated to have been built in France between 1180 and 1279.

Some were built quickly as in the examples of Auxerre,

Coutances, LeMans, in four decades or less.

Glastonbury Abbey in England took only 17 years to build.

Canterbury Cathedral took 343 years.

Amiens, Beauvais, Bourges, Evreaux, Lyon, Rouen,

took more than 300 years.

Bristol Cathedral in England was begun in 1218,

and completed only in 1905,

for a duration of 688 years.

On average, 250 to 300 years represented the time it took to build a Gothic cathedral.

Remember that the building season was restricted by temperature.

In northern climates, you could not build in the winter when cement would freeze.

This was the time in which stone workers and sculptors might work on shaping and carving

stone to go up on the sculptural portions of the cathedral in the mason shed.

The term Gothic is vexed,

and every so often someone suggests replacing it with something like the modern style,

or abolishing the term altogether.

Gothic refers to an architectural style or

a style of Gothic lettering used in Germany until the 20th century.

Gothic is associated with Germany in

the north because of the Germanic tribes, the vandals,

and the goths, and the Visigoths,

which swept across Europe in the fourth to sixth centuries A.D..

The term is the equivalent of barbarism,

and eventually of mixed or bad taste.

Most recently, goth or grunge has been used to

designate young people with pure soft tissue and cartilage,

dangling chains, studded necklaces,

black clothes, a bad attitude,

and flying buttresses in their hair.

At the time of the Renaissance of the 16th century, the French writer,

Francois Rabelais, refers to the Middle Ages as "the time of the goths".

The term really was first used, however,

with romanticism in the 19th century,

and it was related to trees.

Goethe likens cathedrals to the trees of God,

which repeats an earlier trope of Italian Renaissance humanness.

The painter, Raphael, famously remarked around the year 1519,

"This architecture of the Germans did make some sense, however,

as it was derived from trees,

not yet cut down,

but whose branches were bent over and made to form pointed arches when tied together."

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