The Gothic Enterprise:A Guide to Understanding the Medieval Cathedral (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: The Gothic Enterprise:A Guide to Understanding the Medieval Cathedral Norbert Nußbaum The Gothic Enterprise: A Guide to Understanding the Medieval Cathedral. By Robert A. Scott. (Berkeley: University of California Press. 2003. Pp. xiv, 292.) On the surface, this book is a study about the great sacred structures of the High Middle Ages and the causes and circumstances of their creation. But anyone who reads it carefully will soon understand the actual topic paramount in Scott's distinctive perspective. The author is a social scientist who has discovered for himself the sheer fascination of the English cathedrals, reporting here in a very individual way about that voyage of discovery. At the core of this biographical process is Salisbury Cathedral, and it stands at the study's center. And because the Stonehenge megaliths are but a few miles away, at the book's end Scott juxtaposes two monuments as the creations in stone of two differing historical collectives. In this many-faceted and compelling study, he attempts to explore the motives and circumstances of existence of these two collectives. The book begins and ends with a sense of wonderment about the artifacts which first awakened the interest of scholars in the Gothic period some 250 years ago. Scott includes himself in the ranks of these discoverers of wonder in knowledgeable awe of Gothic artistry. He is in search of a kind of holistic understanding of the phenomenon. So he is not only interested in the construction of the great churches between the twelfth and fifteenth centuries, and their fuller meaning. The buildings are also viewed as examples reflecting the ambition and productivity of a medieval feudal society whose cultural habitus was significantly stamped by a belief in the world beyond, cultic practices, magical thought, thinking in symbols and images, and the multiple constraints of a way of life constantly at existential risk. Scott has worked through an abundance of interdisciplinary literature in order to present as many varied aspects of his topic as possible, and his investigative curiosity carries him into the furthest nooks of medieval studies. This is further enriched by frequent consultation of standard works of diverse neighboring disciplines, and these lead to surprising and illuminating insights. However, the selection suffers from an essential limitation in that except for two studies, all the literature he cites is in English, or a work in English translation. The consequence is that Scott can report authoritatively on recent work in social history and the history of mentality, where Anglo-American research has been at the leading edge of inquiry, but when it comes to questions that require a better knowledge of Continental European discourse, his treatment remains inadequate. What I have in mind are, for example, the highly controversial debates, relativizing older theses, on the possibilities for a philosophical-theological interpretation of the medieval church as a model for heaven. Or inquiry on sacred space as a space for social and spiritual acts, or studies on the material economy and technology of the great stonemason workshops. A further result of his selective approach is the heavy focus on a specific geographical area, namely England. This tilt is not necessarily inimical to a correct total cultural-historical portrait, but that rather Anglo-centric picture is difficult to project and transpose onto the continent without certain gaps and fractures. [End Page 139] One may also wonder about the general utility of the findings. Scott investigates several of the fundamental questions on the position, function, and collective frame for action of the clerics almost exclusively in reference to the monastic vita communis of the early medieval period and High Middle Ages – being aware and correctly pointing out that some English cathedrals were under the control of monastic communities. But that was by no means the rule when viewed from a Continental vantage. There the clerical communities of the cathedral chapters were in the quickening process of dissolution precisely at the same time the first Gothic construction projects were launched. So the model of the vita communis cannot be regarded as a spiritual correlate of the community enterprise of the "cathedral." The specific weight given various topics here springs from a distinct discursive...