Gothic Architecture and Cathedrals, Week One

In all my years of studying history, Gothic cathedrals have always ranked fairly high in my interests. Travel and personal experience in these environs have only made it better (or worse if you find yourself awkwardly in a long, rambling conversation with me about cathedrals because that's just not normal conversation fodder). I've always imagined teaching a class such as this to high school level students, but the need arose to adapt it to a younger age group. After the first class, it has the potential to be fabulous or the weirdest class my group of 6th to 8th graders have taken up to this point. I had some terrible technical difficulties which resulted in a horrifically drawn map of medieval Europe on a white board. My mapping skills include loosely labeled blobs in the vaguest set of generalities known to man. I doubt the kids will forget my mad skills any time soon.

That being said, the question for any study of history is where to begin. History is not just a bland listing of facts. It has layers. Much like ogres and onions. Donkey and Shrek may have been speaking of emotions but I've always felt the conversation could have really been about the study of history. I can't hold history to such a serious, academic nature all the time, so you get a Shrek link, because, frankly, history can be the worst. So, I went hardcore and presented 800 years of history in one class. Bless their hearts. 

When we talk about centuries, we say, for example "the 6th century" and you would think that means the 600s, but it doesn't. It was all the dates in the 500s. The 400s are all the 5th century,  all the 700s are the 8th century, etc. I still have to stop and think about it after all these years. For this class, the majority of the 11th and 12th centuries are the Gothic architecture years, so the 1000s and the 1100s. However, we start before year 100 AD and the the Apostle Paul. To explain the world view of the Middle Ages (500-1500 AD), you have to go back a bit. The Bible was the most influential writing of this time period. The foundation of medieval theology are the letters of Paul and a life lived by faith, which is necessary to a Christian life. A good chunk of the background of this class came from this book: 

The basic constructs of medieval life were faith (letters of Paul), civic duty (Romans 13:1-6), an attitude towards women that was subordinate and yet recognized as of great importance to the community, and that both the New Testament and Old Testament were of equal importance; being the complete story of Christ: the times leading to his birth, his life, and then after death. Paul made the connection between the Old and New Testaments in Romans 5:12-16. Medieval people believed Jesus came as the "second Adam" and since there was no Mrs. Jesus medieval scholars made Mary the "second Eve," the giver of the life of Jesus as Eve was the giver of life. The book of Hebrews presents Jesus as a Priest and a King which was a staple for medieval Christian theology.

The second greatest influence on medieval culture was ancient Greece, specifically Plato and Aristotle. This is called "classicism" and it is part of medieval life in art, literature, philosophy, and theology. Plato's works were about "the idea of life" and "the experience of life" follows the thoughts of Aristotle. This is where I modified the class for the younger age level. There's no way to adequately explain the importance of Greek thought and the scholasticism that evolved from this combining of Christian faith to produce the worldview that pervaded the Middle Ages. It is important to note because later on the great Gothic cathedrals were given inspiration by the scholars of that time, which were predominantly monks. 

Now the time line picks up, and we gallop foreword in history.

303AD: Diocletian is the Roman emperor. He was concerned that his subjects were more loyal to their Christian faith than they were to him. It is under his rule that the most severe persecutions of Christians took place. 

• Martyrdom and Sainthood: according to dictionary.com, the basic definition of a martyr is "a person who willingly suffers death rather than renounce his or her religion." The most revered saints of the Catholic church were martyred in this period: Lucy, Margaret, Vincent and Sebastian. These martyrs were given a special status to be remembered. They were made saints; those who are in heaven and eternally in God's favor. Later on when persecution ended, sainthood was extended to those who had lived an exemplary Christian life. This class of sainthood was called "confessors."

306-337AD: Constantine becomes emperor and he recognizes that Diocletian's persecution of the church did not help unify the empire. He believes that unifying the church will help unify his lands under his rule.

313AD: Constantine establishes the Edict of Milan making Sundays as holidays, exempting the clergy from government service, and because he was an all around great guy, he eliminated the branding of the face as punishment because humans are made in the image of God. He also gave property and buildings to the church.

325AD: Constantine saw these things helped in unifying his empire, but it just wasn't quite as organized or successful as he had hoped. He decided that in order for the church to help him, he needed to help the church. He called together the First Ecumenical Council where Constantine and the church leaders put together a statement of core beliefs that was called the Nicene Creed. 

Over the following years, Constantine's sponsorship of Christianity let to it's spread across the empire and beyond. Constantine declared Christianity the only legal religion, going so far as to restrict military and civic service to Christians. 

 

391AD: Theodosius becomes the first emperor to persecute heretics.Problem: If you can't get a job unless you are a professing Christian and now it's illegal to be anything but Christian, do you think some of those people simply became "Christian" just to live peacefully? As Christianity spread, it took on bits and pieces of pagan religion- like our holidays of Easter and Christmas have a pagan origin- and later on we will be discussing Gothic architecture in Ireland, where we will see a slightly different take than continental Europe. 

Now that Christianity is now "safe" and "unified" how does medieval life change? They now have time to *cough* pontificate.

Persecution no longer exists, so how does a person prove how far they are willing to go for Christ?

In 251AD, a man named Antony was born and he took the parable of the rich man and went extreme. He adhered to a Christian version of asceticism, a vigorous self-denial of worldly pleasures, which was sometimes viewed as a kind of "daily martyrdom." This lifestyle demanded its members to remove themselves from society to devote themselves to Christ's service, which began as simply seeking God in his word, but grew over hundreds of years to becoming scholars, educators, setting up hospitals, and other charity work. Men went to monasteries and women went to nunneries.

520AD: St. Benedict of Nursia drew up detailed rules for monks and organized the lives of those who lived in monasteries for the next 500 years. He set out to make sure monks spent their days efficiently and did not become lazy or bored, believing this led man away from God. This day in the life of a Benedictine monk blew the minds of kids in class. So. Much. Church... according to my 6th to 8th grade boys.

So now, Christianity is organized, the empire is organized, and now the monasteries are helping organize medieval life on the community level. People can live and move about, and where they go, Christianity goes with them. 

768-814AD: Charlemagne has arrived, conquering most of the western Christian continental Europe. His concept of Christian empire was him at the head, using a combination of education and religious uniformity, which is often referred to as the Carolingian Renaissance, making his reign the most important in medieval history.

Charlemagne was a highly educated man for that time, deeply committed to the study of theology and learning. He encouraged monasteries to become places of learning. He believed that living a well ordered life was good, but education only made life better.

Everything we have covered here is the foundation of medieval culture. The church was used for good (and not so good) to give the society structure. Once again, for those that did not choose a monastic or nun lifestyle, the question once again became how is a person supposed to prove their devotion to Christ? One way was for them to set out on a pilgrimage. Many people hoped that making a journey like that would bring them forgiveness for their sins or heal them of their afflictions. A pilgrimage was a physical representation of a person's search for spiritual guidance. They journeyed to holy places where saints were buried or where sacred objects/relics were kept. The vessels that contained the relics are called reliquary, and more often than not, they were kept in monasteries. 

A famous bit of literature dedicated to the concept of the pilgrimage was The Canterbury Tales.

As pilgrimages increased, the places were reliquary were kept needed to be open and available to large numbers of people and the space for church goers to partake in the sacred rite. This kind of building needed to be separate from the monasteries so as not to interfere with that lifestyle. From this we get the church building before it became a cathedral.