Case Study: Culture in the High Middle Ages
Guiding Question:
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Sources:
Source 1: Building the Great Cathedrals - PBS Nova Documentary
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Gothic Architecture
Gothic architecture is one of the glories of European civilization, an attempt to lift everyday life to the Heavens, to touch the face of God, in the highest stone vaults, towers, and the steeples that contemporary technology allowed. Here were great buildings that owed as much to the grand vision of client and architect as to the hands of skilled masons. High above the naves of these shiplike structures, and often well out of the range of the human eye, we find expertly carved angels, demons, fronds and finials, the work of individual craftsmen for whom nothing was to be hidden and nothing was too good for the all-seeing eye of the Heavenly Father. The style emerged in France at the time of the bloody crusades to the Holy Land. Its dark beginnings led to some of the most inspiring and daring buildings of all time.
Gothic Characteristics1. The Illuminated Nave - The soaring choirs and transepts of medieval churches display the key elements of Gothic Architecture. The aim of the builders, and architects of the new cathedrals was to build as high and with as much glass as possible. They were to be caskets of light, light that shone through stained glass windows. Pointed arches and ribbed vaults allowed for towering spaces which reached up to the heavens.
2. Stained Glass - Filled with colored glass telling stories of the Old Testament, and of the lives of Christ, his apostles, and saints, these windows were the medieval world's version of color television or the movies.
3. Flying Buttresses - A mass of masonry projecting from a wall to resist the pressure of an arch, roof, or vault. The flying buttress allowed for walls to be built higher and thinner.
4. Tracery and Filigree - Decorative stonework filling the upper part of a Gothic window. Rose widows which were placed behind the alter were made up of a fine web of stone tracery.
5. Spires / Towers - In order to reach even higher into the sky stone spires were built on top of cathedrals. The tallest built in Ulm Germany reached 530 feet. A spire build on the cathedral at Salisbury (England) reaching 404 feet caused the piers that support it to bend outward due to the great amount of weight.
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