Technology and Resource Use in Medieval Europe: Cathedrals, Mills, and Mines

Abstract

Reviewed by: Technology and Resource Use in Medieval Europe* John Muendel (bio) Technology and Resource Use in Medieval Europe. Edited by Elizabeth Bradford Smith and Michael Wolfe. Aldershot: Ashgate, 1997. Pp. vii+216; maps, figures, notes/references, index. $72.95. The essays collected in this book come from a 1995 conference sponsored by the Center for Medieval Studies at Pennsylvania State University. They concern medieval architects, craftsmen, and laborers who performed their tasks within a decidedly empirical framework. The builders of cathedrals, for example, operated with especially exemplary intuition in creating structures both strong and inherently beautiful. Robert Mark demonstrates how Christopher Wren (1632–1723) countered the classical precepts of his time and continued the medieval High Gothic tradition in the construction of the lanterned dome of St. Paul’s Cathedral in London. Sergio Sanabria and Kristina Luce show the thin, upper buttresses of the Metz Cathedral, built by an unknown architect between 1250 and 1257, to be among the slenderest in Gothic architecture and totally lacking imperfections. Lynn T. Courtenay indicates that the same efficiency is found in the work of medieval carpenters who, working with newly cut whole oaks, built the nave roof of the cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris with a stability that coped with the forces of both gravity and wind atop tall, thin walls. In the medieval cities of southern Germany, the experiential techniques of artisans can be detected among those who made gunpowder and manufactured firearms. Bert Hall demonstrates that in the first decades of the fifteenth century the discovery of fast-burning, “corned” gunpowder laid the foundations for the development of the small, portable handgun, which, beginning with the incorporation of the matchlock mechanism and ending with the adoption of the spring-driven wheel-lock device, evolved from the propped “hook gun” to the pistol. The inhabitants of the medieval countryside resorted to the same trial-and-error methods used in the city. Two of the authors here give a different twist to the technical heroics of the medieval rural artisan. Writing about medieval England, Richard Holt downplays the effectiveness of the windmill, the fulling mill, and all the hydraulic machinery of the Cistercians in favor of what he feels is the true basis of medieval production, the small units of the secular household. De-emphasizing the dynamic nature of medieval mechanization as espoused by Lynn White Jr., he even suggests that by the fifteenth century water-driven grainmills were being replaced by horsemills. For Michael Toch, the heavy labor involved with the elimination of fallow, the growing use of fertilization, and the intensification of animal husbandry in Germany during the late Middle Ages surpassed any initiative to develop new machines. The only devices that proved effective for saving human labor were the scythe, which first made its appearance in the eleventh and twelfth centuries—not between the sixth and late eighth centuries [End Page 659] as White would have it—and the large barn for threshing scythed products during inclement weather. Nonetheless, in the realm of medieval German agriculture these innovations played a secondary role in comparison to the labor-intensive cultivation of legumes, onions, and garlic and the production of cheese. Such efforts to minimize the mechanical endeavors of artisans and laborers may be necessary in order to put medieval technology in proper perspective. But if White erred in overemphasizing medieval craftsmen’s enthusiasm for mechanization, Holt, in particular, goes too far in the opposite direction. Other essays in this collection support this conclusion. Two examples: Niall Brady demonstrates that the Gothic barn of England was a means of asserting the prestige and authority of the aristocracy with respect to their tenants, but he also gives ample evidence for its function as a storage, drying, and winnowing facility, even though there were practical advantages to storing crops outdoors in ricks or piles. And in looking at the archaeological evidence for vertical watermills in medieval England, David Crossley rejects any division between medieval and postmedieval techniques from the twelfth to the eighteenth centuries. Box frames, paddles, and buckets of vertical waterwheels evolved in a continuous process marked by innovation and efficiency. Despite some necessary qualifications regarding their themes, the essays contained...