Gothic Architecture

The term was first used during the later Renaissance, and as a 
term of contempt. Says Vasari, "Then arose new architects who 
after the manner of their barbarous nations erected buildings in 
that style which we call Gothic", while Evelyn but expresses the 
mental attitude of his own time when he writes, "The ancient Greek 
and Roman architecture answered all the perfections required in a 
faultless and accomplished building" -- but the Goths and Vandals 
destroyed these and "introduced in their stead a certain 
fantastical and licentious manner of building: congestions of 
heavy, dark, melancholy, monkish piles, without any just 
proportion, use or beauty." For the first time, an attempt was 
made to destroy an instinctive and, so far as Europe was 
concerned, an almost universal form of art, and to substitute in 
its place another built up by artificial rules and premeditated 
theories; it was necessary, therefore, that the ground should be 
cleared of a once luxuriant growth that still showed signs of 
vitality, and to effect this the schools of Vignola, Palladio, and 
Wren were compelled to throw scorn on the art they were determined 
to discredit. As ignorant of the true habitat of the style as they 
were of its nature, the Italians of the Renaissance called it the 
"maniera Tedesca", and since to them the word Goth implied the 
perfection of barbarism, it is but natural that they should have 
applied it to a style they desired to destroy. The style ceased, 
for the particular type of civilization it expressed had come to 
an end; but the name remained, and when, early in the nineteenth 
century, the beginnings of a new epoch brought new apologists, the 
old title was taken over as the only one available, and since then 
constant efforts have been made to define it more exactly, to give 
it a new significance, or to substitute in its place a term more 
expressive of the idea to be conveyed. The word itself, in its 
present application, is repugnant to any sense of exact thought; 
ethnically, the art so described is immediately Franco-Norman in 
its origins, and between the Arian Goths, on the one hand, and the 
Catholic Franks and Normans. on the other, lies a racial, 
religious, and chronological gulf. With the conquest of Italy and 
Sicily by Justinian (535-553) "the race and name of Ostrogoths 
perished for ever" (Bryce, "The Holy Roman Empire", III, 29) five 
centuries before the beginnings of the art that bears their name. 
Modern scholarship seeks deeper even than racial tendencies for 
the root impulses of art in any of its forms, and apart from the 
desirable correction of an historical anachronism it is felt that 
medieval art (of which Gothic architecture is but one category), 
since it owes its existence to influences and tendencies stronger 
than those of blood, demands a name that shall be exact and 
significant, and indicative of the more just estimation in which 
it now is held. 

But little success has followed any of the attempts at definition. 
The effort has produced such varying results as the epithets of 
Vasari and Evelyn, the nebulous or sentimental paraphrases of the 
early nineteenth century romanticists, the narrow archeological 
definitions of De Caumont, and the rigid formalities of the more 
learned logicians and structural specialists, such as MM. Viollet 
le Duc, Anthyme St-Paul, and Enlart, and Professor Moore. The only 
scientific attempt is that of which the first was the originator, 
the last the most scholarly and exact exponent. Concisely stated, 
the contention of this school is that the whole scheme of the 
building is determined by, and its whole strength is made to 
reside in a finely organized and frankly confessed framework 
rather than in walls. This framework, made up of piers, arches and 
buttresses, is freed from every unnecessary incumbrance of wall 
and is rendered as light in all its parts as is compatible with 
strength -- the stability of the building depending not upon inert 
massiveness, except in the outermost abutment of active parts 
whose opposing forces neutralize each other and produce a perfect 
equilibrium. It is thus a system of balanced thrusts in 
contradistinction to the ancient system of inert stability. Gothic 
architecture is such a system carried out in a finely artistic 
spirit (Charles H. Moore, "Development and Character of Gothic 
Architecture", I, 8).

This is an admirable statement of the fundamental structural 
element in Gothic architecture, but, carried away by enthusiasm 
for the crowning achievement of the human intellect in the domain 
of construction, those who have most clearly demonstrated its pre- 
eminence have usually fallen into the error of declaring this one 
quality to be the touchstone of Gothic architecture, minimizing 
the importance of all aesthetic considerations, and so denying the 
name of Gothic to everything where the system of balanced thrusts, 
ribbed vaulting, and concentrated loads did not consistently 
appear. Even Professor Moore himself says, "Wherever a framework 
maintained on the principle of thrust and counter-thrust is 
wanting, we have not Gothic" (Moore, op. cit., I, 8). The result 
is that all the medieval architects of Western Europe, with the 
exception of that produced during the space of a century and a 
half, and chiefly within the limits of the old Royal Domain of 
France, is denied the title of Gothic. Of the whole body of 
English architecture produced between 1066 and 1528 it is said, 
"The English claim to any share in the original development of 
Gothic, or to the consideration of the pointed architecture of the 
Island as properly Gothic at all, must be abandoned" (Moore, op. 
cit., Preface to first ed., 8), and the same is said of the 
contemporary architecture of Germany, Italy, and Spain. Logically 
applied this rule would exclude also all the timber-roofed 
churches and the civil and military structures erected in France 
contemporaneously with the cathedrals and (though this point is 
not pressed) even the west fronts of such admittedly Gothic 
edifices as the cathedrals of Paris, Amiens, and Reims. As one 
commentator on Gothic architecture has said, "A definition so 
restricted carries with it its own condemnations" (Francis Bond, 
"Gothic Architecture in England ", I, 10). 

A still greater argument against the acceptance of this structural 
definition lies in the fact that while, as Professor Moore 
declares, "the Gothic monument, thought wonderful as a structural 
organism, is even more wonderful as a work of art" (op. cit., V, 
190), this great artistic element, which for more than three 
centuries was predominant throughout the greater part of Western 
Europe, existed quite independently of the supreme structural 
system, and varies only in minor details of racial bias and of 
presentation, whether it is found in France or Normandy, Spain or 
Italy, Germany, Flanders, or Great Britain -- this, which is in 
itself the manifestation of the underlying impulses and the actual 
accomplishments of the era it connotes, is treated as an accessory 
to a structural evolution, and is left without a name except the 
perfunctory title of "Pointed", which is even less descriptive 
than the word Gothic itself. 

The structural definition has failed of general acceptance, for 
the temper of the time is increasingly impatient of materialistic 
definitions, and there is a demand for broader interpretations 
that shall take cognizance of underlying impulses rather than of 
material manifestations. The fact is recognized that around and 
beyond the structural aspects of Gothic architecture lie other 
qualities of equal importance and greater comprehensiveness, and, 
if the word is still to be used in the general sense in which it 
always has been employed, viz., as denoting the definite 
architectural expression of certain peoples acting under definite 
impulses and within definite limitations of time, a completely 
evolved structural principle cannot be used as the sole test of 
orthodoxy, if it excludes the great body of work executed within 
that period, and which in all other respects has complete 
uniformity and a consistent significance. 

It may be said of Gothic architecture that it is an impulse and a 
tendency rather than a perfectly rounded accomplishment; 
aesthetically, it never achieved perfection in any given monument, 
or group of monuments, nor were its possibilities ever fully 
worked out except in the category of structural science. Here 
alone, finality was achieved by the cathedral-builders of the Ile-
de-France, but this fact cannot give to their work exclusive claim 
to the name of Gothic. The art of any given time is the expression 
of certain racial qualifications modified by inheritance, 
tradition, and environment, and working themselves out under the 
control of religious and secular impulses. When these elements are 
sound and vital, combined in the right proportions, and operating 
for a sufficient length of time, the result is a definite style in 
some one or more of the arts. Such a style is Gothic architecture, 
and it is to this style, regarded in its most inclusive aspect, 
that the term Gothic is applied by general consent, and in this 
sense the word is used here. 

Gothic architecture and Gothic art are the aesthetic expression of 
that epoch of European history when paganism had been 
extinguished, the traditions of classical civilization destroyed, 
the hordes of barbarian invaders beaten back, or Christianized and 
assimilated; and when the Catholic Church had established itself 
not only as the sole spiritual power, supreme and almost 
unquestioned in authority, but also as the arbiter of the 
destinies of sovereigns and of peoples. During the first five 
centuries of the Christian Era the Church had been fighting for 
life, first against a dying imperialism, then against barbarian 
invasions. The removal of the temporal authority to Constantinople 
had continued the traditions of civilization where Greek, Roman, 
and Asiatic elements were fused in a curious alembic one result of 
which was an architectural style that later, and modified by many 
peoples, was to serve as the foundation-stone of the Catholic 
architecture of the West. Here, in the meantime, the condition had 
become one of complete chaos, but the end of the Dark Ages was at 
hand, and during the entire period of the sixth century events 
were occurring which could only have issue in the redemption of 
the West. The part played in the development of this new 
civilization by the Order of St. Benedict and by Pope St. Gregory 
the Great cannot be over estimated: through the former the 
Catholic Faith became a more living and personal attribute of the 
people, and began as well to force its way across the frontiers of 
barbarism, while by its means the long-lost ideals of law and 
order were in a measure re-established. As for St. Gregory the 
Great, he may almost be considered the foundation-stone of the new 
epoch. The redemption of Europe was completed during the four 
centuries following his death, and largely at the hands of the 
monks of Cluny and Pope St. Gregory VII (1073-1085), who freed the 
Church from secular dominion. With the twelfth century were to 
come the Cistercian reformation, the revivifying and purification 
of the episcopate and the secular clergy by the canons regular, 
the development of the great schools founded in the preceding 
century, the communes, the military orders, and the Crusades; 
while the thirteenth century, with the aid of Pope Innocent III, 
Philip Augustus, St. Louis, and the Franciscans and Dominicans, 
was to raise to the highest point of achievement the spiritual and 
material potentialities developed in the immediate past. 

This is the epoch of Gothic architecture. As we analyse the 
agencies that together were to make possible a civilization that 
could blossom only in some pre-eminent art, we find that they fall 
into certain definite categories. Ethnically the northern blood of 
the Lombards, Franks, and Norsemen was to furnish the physical 
vitality of the new epoch. Political the Holy Roman Empire, the 
Capetian sovereigns of the Franks, and the Dukes of Normandy were 
to restore that sense of nationality without which creative 
civilization is impossible, while the papacy, working through the 
irresistible influence of the monastic orders gave the underlying 
impulse. Normandy in the eleventh century was simply Cluny in 
action, and during this period the structural elements in Gothic 
architecture were brought into being. The twelfth century was that 
of the Cistercians, Carthusians, and Augustinians, the former 
infusing into all Europe a religious enthusiasm that clamoured for 
artistic expression, while by their antagonism to the over-rich 
art of the elder Benedictines, they turned attention from 
decoration to plan and form, and construction. The Cluniac and the 
Cistercian reforms through their own members and the other orders 
which they brought into being were the mobile and efficient arm of 
a reforming papacy, and from the day on which St. Benedict 
promulgated his rule, they became a visible manifestation of law 
and order. With the thirteenth century, the episcopate and the 
secular clergy joined in the labour of adequately expressing a 
united and unquestioned religious faith, and we may say, 
therefore, that the civilization of the Middle Ages was what the 
Catholic Faith organized and invincible had made it. We may, 
therefore, with good reason, substitute for the undescriptive 
title "Gothic" the name "The Catholic Style" as being exact and 
reasonably inclusive. 

The beginnings of the art that signalized the triumph of Catholic 
Christianity are to be found in Normandy. Certain elements may be 
traced back to the Carolingian builders, the Lombards in Italy and 
the Copts and Syrians of the fourth century, and so to the Greeks 
of Byzantium. They are but elements however, germs that did not 
develop until infused with the red blood of the Norsemen and 
quickened by the spirit of the Cluniac reform. The style developed 
in Normandy during the eleventh century contained the major part 
of these elemental norms, which were to be still further fused and 
co-ordinated by the Franks, raised to final perfection, and 
transfigured by a spirit which was that of the entire medieval 
world. Marvellous as was this achievement, that of the Normans was 
even more remarkable, for in the style they handed on to the 
Franks was inherent every essential potentiality. At this moment 
Normandy was the focus of northern vitality and almost, for the 
moment, the religious centre of Europe. The founding of 
monasteries was very like a mania and the result a remarkable