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The most inspiring architecture known to humankind is arguably that which is modelled around the pointed arch, commonly known as Gothic.
This enlightening and graceful form has cemented itself into the consciousness of humanity as symbolising sacredness, and is recognised as such wherever it has been imprinted, whether on the African veldt, in an outback town, at the portals of the Andes, or in the immense and overwhelming cathedrals such as Chartres, York, Rheims, Cologne and Salisbury - creations that beggar the imagination and still the mind with their boldness.
The Gothic style is symptomatic and symbolic of the fantastic burst of intellectual and spiritual energy which had its nascence in the twelfth century, flowered in the fourteenth century, and transformed itself into something unrecognisable by the time Columbus' fleet touched new lands in the West, in the period known as the Renaissance.
Gothic architecture is the perfect setting for the imagery of the Virgin Mother, whose cult had its origins before the First Crusade, but which reached its apogee with the arrival of the great aisled cathedrals of the high middle ages and in countless lyrics meant for recital in the churches:
Saintly Mary, Virgin,
Mother of Jesus Christ the Nazarene,
Take, shield, help your Godric,
Receiving him, bring him on high with you to God's Kingdom.
Saintly Mary, Christ's bower,
Purest maiden, of all mothers the flower,
Wipe away my sin, reign in my heart,
Bring me in bliss with that very same God.1
The Virgin occupies a complex and confusing picture at the centre of medieval theology. She is at once the perfect, removed saint, interceding between earthly creatures and the highest heavenly hierarchy, and simultaneously she is the desired and remote beauty who is the prime mover of chivalry.
Thus, even the saintly Hildegard addressed the Virgin in terms heavily overladen with eroticism:
...generous,
glorious,
and unviolated maiden,
you pupil in the eye of chastity,
you embodiment of sanctity,
pleasing to God...
...O most beautiful
and most sweet;
how greatly God has delighted in you!
in the clasp of his fire
in you he has planted his son
so he might be suckled by you.
The proper seat of this most unobtainable maiden is the multi layered text of Chartres cathedral, and her abstract faces are the blinding rose windows of Notre Dame and Westminster. Above all, she is the spiritual light of the Crusades, the ultimate role model for femininity in that age, the wise mother-woman-guide of the knights. Known in Europe and celebrated at sites such as Chartres for two hundred years, her cult may have well been given its greatest impetus by the Crusaders who returned inspired by the imagery of Byzantium, saturated as it was in celebration of God's mother.
As with so much of the cultural change occuring from the twelfth century on, it is arguable as to whether the transforming architectural style that made this vision possible was brought back from Palestine by Crusaders. Were they indeed touched by the sight of pointed arches in Arabic mosques? It is certain that the pointed arch was present in Arab buildings dating to at least the tenth century.2 Whether the Crusaders learned directly from Eastern styles is less certain.
Runciman, for example, is of the opinion that the introduction of the pointed arch was a direct outcome of the Crusades, pointing to the building of two churches in about 1115 by Ida of Lorraine. She was the mother of Godfrey and Baldwin, and when she built her chapels her other son Eustace had only just recently returned from the East. The churches were Wast and Saint Walmer at Boulogne, and it is Runciman's view that:
"It is difficult not to believe that returning architects popularized the new device in the West, where it was developed to suit local structural needs."3
The weakness in the equation of Crusader expansion with importation of the pointed arch is the existence of the pointed stone arches to be found in buildings such as Durham Cathedral, in the north of England. This particular edifice was begun as early as 1093, two years before the address at Clermont.
It may be that earlier encounters between East and West had introduced an architectural style which was to come of age when it was needed, after the First Crusade, or that Europe's architects invented the arch themselves, without prompting from the East.
The great name associated with the first large scale employment of the elements of the Gothic style is Abbot Suger of Paris, servant of Louis and Eleanor, regent of the kingdom during their absence on the Second Crusade.
He makes clear in his writings the crucial part played by the crusades in his architectural planning. In the years after the First Crusade, the French were taken over by an unprecedented wave of religious fervour, inspired by the success of the first pilgrims. On feast days, hordes crushed into the ancient basilica of St Denis, desperate for a glimpse of a relic. No one could move so much as a foot, as the mobs strained in opposite directions, nor do anything except to stand like a marble statue, numbed, or in the final resort, scream. The women's distress was so great that they could be seen squeezed in the mass of strong men as if in a winepress, their faces bloodless as death. They cried horribly, as though in labour. Several of them, trodden underfoot, might be lifted above the heads of the crowd, while others could be seen panting for breath where they were placed in the cloisters. The brethren whose job it was to display the relics often had nowhere to turn, but had to make their escape with the relis through the windows. This had been going on ever since the First Crusade: Suger says he heard of it in his youth. In
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