The greatest art and architecture in world history - the Gothic cathedral

What is left of the decaying corpulent carcass of Western Civilisation, owes its art and architecture to the Catholic Church, along with its greatest music (classical).  Churches, minsters, Cathedrals, paintings, sculpture, mosaics, stained glass, illuminated manuscripts and building facades, provided inspiration, admiration and imitation across the centuries.  The created world and Catholic themes were the most important innovative factor in art and architecture in world history. 

The Catholic Church’s official opposition to iconoclasm or the destruction of any image which was related to Christ and God cannot be overemphasised.  By rejecting this Eastern heresy the beautiful pietas of Michaelangelo and many others were sculpted, the Madonnas of Raphael chiselled, the wonderful elegiacal facades carved, and the endless arrays of technically advanced paintings were developed. 

This stupendously powerful and evocative view of representational religious art is unique in the world.  The Muhammadan cult does not allow any religious artwork.  The Byzantines spent almost 200 years mired in the iconoclastic controversy where all depictions of Christ or religious themes was forbidden.  Protesters aka Protestants attacked, burned and defiled priceless religious works of art, smashing statues, altarpieces, stained-glass windows and priceless treasures.  This was called a ‘Reformation’. 

The greatest Catholic innovation in art and architecture, surpassing the public works of Rome, was the Cathedral, called Gothic by the 18^th century self-proclaimed ‘Enlighteners’.  Gothic was utilised as a pejorative, associating the majestic genius of Cathedral building to the Germanic and uncivilised Goth tribes.  This association was determined by men wearing wigs who could not build a home garden.  These Cathedrals are simply the greatest works of art in history.

The ’Gothic’ style grew out of the Romanesque architecture of the 10^th and 11^th centuries.  Originating in France, Romanesque churches were much larger than the existing smaller wooden and stone churches and minsters found in Northern Europe.  The Gothic style, which commenced in the 12^th century, built on the Romanesque, greatly increasing the width and height, employing flying buttresses, the pointed arch, and the ribbed vault, along with stained glass windows to let in the light and illuminate the realm of God on Earth and to enlighten the minds of men and remove the pagan past and the evil of nature worship.  These were and are, engineering masterpieces.  It is unlikely we have the skills today to build a Gothic cathedral from the beginning, without the aid of CAD or digital programs.

(Salisbury Cathedral)

Each Cathedral was mathematical in its planning.  There is an impressive geometric coherence to the Gothic style based on Saint Augustine and his reference to Wisdom 11:21, where God has ordered all things by measure, number and weight.  This ancient Catholic belief informed the construction of these gigantic edifices.  God and his creation were in part linked by mathematics – a belief held by the ancient Greeks and in particular Pythagoras. 

The geometric proportionality of these constructions is simply remarkable.  Salisbury Cathedral in England, with one of the tallest spires in the world, is an example.  This Cathedral’s central crossing is 39 feet by 39 feet.  The central crossing is where the transept intersects the east-west axis.  This primary dimension becomes the basis for the rest of the Cathedral’s construction.  Both the length and the width of each of the nave’s ten bays is 19 feet six inches – or half the length of the central crossing.  The nave itself consists of 20 identical spaces measuring 19 feet six inches square, and another 10 spaces measuring 19 feet six inches by 39 feet.  It is geometrically exact.

(inside Salisbury Cathedral) 

Everything about these buildings reveals a supernatural inspiration.  The upward reach of the spire, the massive columns and stone, the light pouring into the nave, the grand entrance into a holy place, the brilliance and colour of the sanctuary, the decorations, the embossing of gold, the ceremony and pageantry of a mass; all of this and much more overawes the human with the greatness of the divine.  Far from being a ‘dark age’, this was an age of rationalism leading to engineering brilliance, an age of belief developing the underlying cultural fabric of Western civilisation, including its laws and mores.