Lydgate and the Lanterne: discourse, heresy and the ethics of architecture in early fifteenth-century England

Abstract

At the turn of the fifteenth century, architectural ethics acquired renewed prominence in England. A long-established discourse that had been developed by major figures in Europe’s intellectual history, and that threatened to reject all but the most utilitarian church-building projects, was given new energy, as well as a new English vocabulary and a newly extensive application, in heretical tracts and poems. At the same time, the poet most associated with the Lancastrian court, John Lydgate, was translating a lavish paean to ingenious and luxurious craftsmanship, while his patron’s circle was engaged in a wave of lavish building projects in cathedrals, universities, and parish churches—and, indeed, was prosecuting Lollards for their criticism of the same. Most remarkable, however, is that, having been scrupulously suppressed in the 1410s, a concern for restrained architecture would re-emerge twenty years later as a widely shared architectural ideology among England’s elite, including the king, Henry VI. For thirty years, it would come to shape a series of significant building projects. This article argues that this change must be understood as representing the reconstitution of a number of ideas and claims, necessitated by the dissolution of the interdependent antagonisms of the 1410s, in the context of newly influential spiritual, ethical, and sensory discourses.