Gothic Cathedrals :: Europe European Architecture Essays

chivalric CathedralsFor nearly four hundred years Gothic elan dominated the computer architecture of western Europe. It originated in blue France in the twelfth century, andspread rapidly across England and the Continent, invading the old Viking empireof Scandinavia. It confronted the Byzantine provinces of Central Europe and pull down made appearances in the near East and the Americas. Gothic architectsdesigned townspeople h solelys, royal palaces, courthouses, and hospitals. They fortifiedcities and castles to defend lands against invasion. But it was in the serviceof the church, the just about prolific builder of the Middle Ages, that the Gothicstyle got its most substantive expression, providing the widest scope for thedevelopment of architectural ideas.Although by 1400 Gothic had become the global style of building inthe Western world, its creative heartland was in northern France in an argonastretching from the royal domain around Paris, including Saint-Denis andCha rtres, to the country of the Champagne in the east and southward to Bourges.Within this restricted area, in the series of cathedrals built in the course ofthe 12th and 13th centuries, the study innovations of Gothic architecture tookplace.The supernatural character of medieval religious architecture was givena special form in the Gothic church. mediaeval man considered himself but animperfect refraction of Divine Light of God, Whose synagogue stood on earth,according to the text of the dedication ritual, stood for the Heavenly City ofJerusalem.3 The Gothic interpretation of this point of view was a cathedral sogrand that seems to belittle the man who enters it, for space, light, structureand the plastic effects of the stonework are made to produce 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 ghostly needs of the Church, but excessively the general a ttitude of the peopleof that time. Gothic was not dark, massive, and contained like the olderRomanesque style, but light, open, and aerial, and its appearance in all partsof Europe had an enduring effect on the outlook of bring home the bacon generations.Gothic architecture evolved at a time of profound complaisant and economicchange in Western Europe. In the late eleventh and twelfth centuries trade andindustry were revived, particularly in northern Italy and Flanders, and a livelycommerce brought about better communications, not only amid neighboring townsbut also between far-distant regions. Politically, the twelfth century wasalso the time of the expansion and consolidation of the State.