Medieval Cathedrals Research Articles

A Mathematical Look at a Medieval Cathedral

A Mathematical Look at a Medieval Cathedral

The Wise Master Builder: Platonic Geometry in Plans of Medieval Abbeys and Cathedrals. Nigel Hiscock

<i>The Wise Master Builder: Platonic Geometry in Plans of Medieval Abbeys and Cathedrals</i>. Nigel Hiscock

Commentary on The Inner World of the Genetic Counselor: The Unexamined Counseling Life.

The stories told by the counselors in Abrams’ and Kessler’s article touch each of us on an intuitive level. We have all shared, or will one day share, similar experiences and uncertainties. Their tales validate our insights, reassure us about our insecurities and bring a smile of recognition. The experiences of these counselors create a sense of community by making us realize that we all suffer the same trials and tribulations as we go about the business of our profession. As such, the article stands by itself, and needs no explication. Why bother explaining the universal and obvious? But these stories can serve another purpose. By analyzing them, by getting the perspectives and interpretations of peers and mentors, the experiences of these anonymous “Everyman” counselors can serve as vehicles for the professional growth of other genetic counselors. An architecturally naive person can be moved to awe by the grandeur of a Medieval cathedral, but a knowledgeable tour guide can teach us about flying buttresses, ribbed vaults, and rounded arches and give a different dimension to the experience of walking through the building. The cathedral can then be appreciated as much for its architectural sophistication as for its beauty. And if you can comprehend the structure of the cathedral, you can understand its strengths and limitations. How do these stories help us grow? On one level, the answer is simple—they challenge us. It is easy to counsel patients who like us, who enjoy their time with us, laugh at our jokes, and congratulate us on our skills and compassion. They make us feel good about ourselves, and stroke our professional egos. But pleasant patients do not force us to examine our basic skills, assumptions, and ethics. Why bother changing and growing if everybody is having a good time? A tough lesson for me to learn has been that difficult patients, awful counseling sessions, and awkward encounters offer the best opportunities for professional

The Engineering of Medieval Cathedrals. Lynn T. Courtenay

Previous articleNext article No AccessReviewsThe Engineering of Medieval Cathedrals. Lynn T. Courtenay Sergio SanabriaSergio Sanabria Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Speculum Volume 77, Number 1Jan., 2002 The journal of the Medieval Academy of America Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.2307/2903812 Views: 6Total views on this site Copyright 2002 The Medieval Academy of AmericaPDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

The Wise Master Builder: Platonic Geometry in Plans of Medieval Abbeys and Cathedrals (review)

The Wise Master Builder: Platonic Geometry in Plans of Medieval Abbeys and Cathedrals (review)

Reading Reims, I. The Sculptures on the Chapel Buttresses

Notre-Dame at Reims is one of the most famous and influential of all medieval cathedrals, but it does not express an unchanging, monolithic system of beliefs through its decoration, as it has so often been presented. Although it is best known as the coronation church of the kings of France, we need to keep in mind that over the course of 800 years there have been only 25 coronations in the cathedral and that its meanings are far richer and more complex than those that attend the site of coronation. By focusing on the earliest of its many programs of decoration, namely, the twelve figures at the top of the radiating chapel wall and pier buttresses, and by using detailed photographs made prior to the 1914 bombardments, this study demonstrates that from the beginning Reims was constructed with many overlapping, multivalent meanings that were understood and interpreted in different ways over time.

The Engineering of Medieval Cathedrals

The Engineering of Medieval Cathedrals

Do cathedral glasses flow?

A general belief among members of the scientific community is that glass articles can be bent irreversibly and that they flow at ambient temperature. This myth is mostly based on widespread stories that stained-glass windows of medieval cathedrals are thicker in the lower parts. In this paper I estimate the time periods required for glass to flow and deform at ordinary temperatures, using calculated viscosity curves for several modern and ancient glass compositions. The conclusion is that window glasses may flow at ambient temperature only over incredibly long times, which exceed the limits of human history.

Reconciliation of Cultures in the Third Republic: Émile Mâle (1862-1954)

RECONCILIATION OF CULTURES IN THE THIRD REPUBLIC: EMILE MALE (1862-1954) Joseph F. Byrnes* The Lost Catholic Patrimony1 When Emile Mâle deciphered the art programs of the French medieval cathedrals, and, in fact, religious art from the twelfth to the eighteenth centuries, he rediscovered a culture2—clerical, artistic, and popular—that had been expressed in the art.3 "Mr.Byrnes is professor ofmodern European history in Oklahoma State University,Stillwater . He wishes to acknowledge gratefully the help of Gilberte Émile-Mâle, daughter of the historian; Annick Adam, librarian and archivist at the Bibliothèque de l'Institut; and Daniel Moulinet, Francis-Noël Thomas, and Elizabeth Williams. A brief version of this article was presented at the annual meeting ofthe Western Society for French History in October of 1994.¦André Chastel glosses the term "patrimony" as "an artistic and architectural (monumental ) heritage in which one can recognize oneself." See "Le Patrimoine,"in Pierre Nora (ed.), Les Lieux de mémoire:II La Nation ** (Paris, 1984-1992), p. 420. This volume is one of a series of seven.The first is entitled La République; the second, third, and fourth volumes are bear the title // La Nation, each successive volume indicated by one, two, three asterisks; the fifth, sixth, and seventh volumes all bear the title IIILes France, each successive volume indicated by arabic numerals and subtitles. Readers of these volumes should consult Steven Englund's masterly criticism oftheir analytical framework. See"The Ghost of Nation Past,"Journal ofModern History, 64 (1992), 299-320, and "History in a Late Age: A Review Essay of Pierra Nora, ed., Les France" French Politics and Society, 14 (1996), 68-79- Englund argues forcefully that "nation" and "France" are ideological constructs subject to historical and critical analysis. Taking my cue from Englund, I hold that Male's achievement must be understood as part ofa continuum: a major step in the scholarly clarification of medieval culture and a major step in the development of one principal definition of French national consciousness. Philip Schlesinger says that "national cultures are not simple repositories of shared symbols to which the entire population stands in identical fashion." Rather they are to be approached as sites of contestation in which competition over definitions takes place. See "On National Identity: Some Conceptions and Misconceptions Criticized," Social Science Information, 26 (1987), 260-261; I am grateful to Steven Englund for pointing out this reference. 2"Culture" has been defined by the anthropologist Clifford Geertz as an "historically transmitted pattern ofmeanings embodied in symbols, a system ofinherited conceptions 401 402RECONCILIATION OF CULTURES INTHE THIRD REPUBUC: EMILE MÂLE (1862-1954) Over a period of thirty-four years Mâle published four great syntheses of religious art history. Each synthesis was effected in a different manner , depending upon the sources used to explain the subject matter and the media employed by the artists. In LArt religieux du XIIIe siècle en France (1898), then, it was the Speculum Majus, the encyclopedia of religious thought byVincent ofBeauvais. In LArt religieux de lafin du moyen âge en France (1908), it was the Franciscan theologians of deep religious sentiment; in LArt religieux du XIIF siècle en France (1922), expressed in symbolic forms by means ofwhich men communicate, perpetuate, and develop their knowledge about and attitudes toward life." See Clifford Geertz,"Religion as a Cultural System," The Interpretation ofCultures:SelectedEssays (New York, 1973),p.89. In the decades since the appearance of this essay, the concept of culture has become highly politicized. Stefan Collini says that contemporary cultural studies are less concerned with the "plurality of symbolic systems and practices that enable different groups to make various kinds of sense of their lives"; more concerned with the attempt to give voice to minority cultures—"social therapy." See his"Escape from DWEMsville: Is Culture Too Important to be left to Cultural Studies?" Times Literary Supplement, May 27, 1994, pp. 3-4. In my essay I retain the use of the term "culture" in the older, standard anthropological sense established by Geertz. Male's work was, in effect, a study of"culture" as defined by cultural anthropologists from Clyde Kluckholn to Clifford Geertz. Among modern medievalists, those who...

Inside the New Temple: The High Cost of Mistaking Medicine for Religion

What is the connection between ancient religious temples and the high cost of health care in America today? James Stacey, the widely respected director of the AMA's Division of Media and Information Services, who is conversant with current debates about reining in health care costs, tells us in a challenging format. He likens modern hospitals and the attendant medical establishment to medieval cathedrals built at great expense to the masses. The builders, religious zealots, promised a long and wonderful life, now and in the hereafter, to those who entered—and who paid their hard-earned contributions. Stacey believes our current health care establishment has built a huge edifice (temple) and has promised much more than can be delivered at a reasonable cost. Who is the villain? Stacey believes it is modern medical technology: the drugs, tests, machines, and operations that make this an era of hope for millions, yet cost and cost.

The new icons?: the art of television advertising

Commercials enjoy a privileged place in one of the most important institutions of everyday life - television. Such is their prominence that a comparison can be made to the icons gracing the walls of a much older institution, the medieval cathedral. Paul Rutherford admits that the analogy can be carried too far, but he sees commercials as 'the art of our times' and approaches them as an art historian would. Like icons, commercials can be 'read' for particular styles or for the myths of a national culture; like icons, they are instruments of cultural power. Rutherford is an aficionado of fine commercials, more interested in what commercials are than what they do, and his love of the subject infuses this illustrated cultural history. Tracing commercials from the late 1940s, when they made their first appearance, to the early 1990s, Rutherford focuses on the shape and character of actual commercials as well as on what we do with them. He has studied roughly six thousand commercials, from Sweden to Hong Kong, Canada to Ecuador, France to South Africa. This book concentrates on 'commercials of distinction,' or ads that have been singled out for special merit: the Classic Clios of the 1950s, the 'Marlboro Country' campaign of the 1960s, Coca-Cola and Pepsi ads, Canada's best (the Bessies), and the world's best (the Cannes Lions). Rutherford looks at the most celebrated pieces of work to understand the creativity and significance of this truly modern art form. The breadth of Rutherford's treatment is unique. He explores such diverse topics as the aesthetic response to commercials; how ads mirror viewers' anxieties, aspirations, and ideology; the importance of gender and age in the adworld; the prevailing ethos of consumption; the emergence of a global repertoire of images; and the persistence of national styles. This is a story of one kind of cultural power.; how it has been generated and stored, articulated and exercised, resisted as well as maintained.

Medieval Stained Glass: A Model for Leaching of Vitrified Wastes

Silicate glasses, because of their abil i ty to i nco rpo ra t e high p r o p o r t i o n s of po l lu t ing elements such as heavy metals or transition elements, represent one of the best matrices for stabilizing and storing industrial or domestic wastes. Nevertheless, these glasses are subject to atmospheric agents or pore waters during their storage or valorization, and may be deteriorated by leaching. Under natural conditions of pH, the polluting elements (Pb, Cu, Zn, Cr...) trapped in the vitreous matrix can be partly leached in aqueous fluids over several decades or several centuries. The result is potential pollution and the impossibility to valorize these vitrified wastes. Thus, a comprehension of the leaching processes of polluting elements in a vitreous matrix and the quantification of their release as a function of time, is a prerequisite for storing or valorization of vitrified wastes. As a complement to experimental studies of leaching, we show that the evaluation of the longevity of vitrified wastes can be tackled by an analogical approach. Although basaltic glasses have already been used as natural analogues, we suggest that the stained glasses of medieval cathedrals dating from the XII to XIVth century are a much more suitable model for the study of the ageing of stabilized glasses. Indeed, these stained glasses not only have a composition very similar to that of the vitrified wastes, but have also undergone conditions of alteration which are probably similar to those envisaged for the waste glasses. The stained glasses studied have compositions rich in silica, calcium and alkalis (see Table). They are very similar to vitrified wastes. This holds not only for major elements, but also for trace and volatile elements. Indeed, their coloration was obtained by adding heavy metals or transition elements whose concentrations are close to those measured in vitrified wastes. Moreover, stained glasses were conserved on windows or were accidentally buried underground. Thus, they allow us to follow the alteration of glass under different condit ions after 600 to 900 years exposure. These glasses show three types of alteration: 1) a meteoric alteration as deduced from a study of the outside of the windows, 2) an alteration by condensation of water as deduced from a study of the inside of the windows, and 3) an alteration by ground waters and humic acids of samples in the soil.

Analytical study of salt migration and efflorescence in a mediaeval cathedral

Ion chromatography was used to examine stone damp and the conventration profiles of leachable salts (mainly nitrates, sulphates and chlorides) in the limestone building blocks of the interior of a mediaeval basilica in The Netherlands before and after desalination with the aid of the paper pulp poulticing technique. Autochthonous sulphates contained in the marl and periodical variations in humidity are held to be primarily responsible for the observed weathering effects. After the marl substrate had been cleaned the inner walls run a much smaller risk of damage due to moisture in the future with more confidence as to conservation.

Brickwork: architecture and design

Throughout the long history of building, the simple brick has served many functions in many guises. This is a study of this universal building material, throughout history and around the world. As well as tracing the long and remarkable story of the many uses of the brick, it surveys the myriad designs possible in brick architecture and the techniques of brick fabrication, and examines the engineering properties of brickwork when used as a major structural component - from the simple garden wall to the arch, to the mediaeval cathedral. A comprehensive technical section covers materials and construction techniques - brick types, their manufacture, selection of which brick for which job, construction techniques (mortars, jointing, pointing and bonding), structural techniques (walls, buttresses, corbelling, cornices, arches and vaults) and conservation.

Honesty and Consecration: Paul Tillich’s Criteria for a Religious Architecture

In my early life [Paul Tillich told a conference of church architects in 1965], I wished to become an architect and only in my late teens the other desire, to become a philosophical theologian, was victorious. I decided to build in concepts and propositions instead of stone, iron, and glass. But building remains my passion, in clay and in thought, and as the relation of the medieval cathedrals to the scholastic systems shows, the two ways of building are not so far from each other. Both express an attitude to the meaning of life as a whole.

Editorial

In summers past one of my ministries consisted of serving as coordinator of an international, ecumenical team of guides for the Cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris. In ten different languages, these university students and I gave hour-long tours of the cathedral, initiating visitors to its architecture, statues, stained glass windows, and their significance. As in other medieval cathedrals, its stone and glass work is a mini-Bible for those unable to read, as well as a summa theologiae for those not sitting at the feet of Peter Lombard, Bonaventure or Aquinas. Much to my astonishment I discovered that the tourists I personally guided — Christians and Jews — were more than just rusty about Bible history; they were ignorant. Jews from New York were often as vague about Jesse's root, David and Goliath, Ruth and her husband, and Jonah, as Christians, even evangelicals, were astonishingly unfamiliar with the wedding feast at Cana, the risen Christ's appearance as gardener to Mary Magdalene, and other biblical scenes.

The Railway Station: A Social History by Jeffrey Richards, John M. Mackenzie

464 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE only when the strength of the American worker came to symbolize the strength of the nation. The remainder of Dabakis’s article addresses representations in the 1920s of unskilled laborers, principally women, blacks, and recent immigrants who had neither union nor political representation. These workers could not be symbols of national power or strength and were therefore the subject of few artistic representations. Saul Baizerman’s series of bronze statuettes acknowledging and memorializing the con­ tributions of unskilled labor and his vision of a “new workers’ society” are rare exceptions. These miniatures were produced as models for a monumental sculpture project never executed. Abstracted to their simplest geometric forms, these faceless figures could only symbolize the worker community and commemorate their collective efforts. In her introduction, Fahlman acknowledges the lack of any Amer­ ican equivalent to Francis D. Klingender’s Art and the Industrial Rev­ olution (1947). The articles in this IA volume add specifics on the relationship between art and American industry but do not provide the historical overview found in Klingender’s book. Although infor­ mative in discussing the way art served to advance industry, there is little here concerning where these works and their artists are situated within the broader context of American art history. With the exception of Pennell, they are outside the mainstream of American art. Without diminishing their documentary or historical importance, it is safe to say that they are not important as works of art. Commercial art pro­ duced as advertisements for developing industrial cities or for the westward advancement of the railroad is treated equally with “high” art without regard to issues of connoisseurship. Except for Wright’s article, there is little discussion of patronage or why, and for whom, these images were produced. It is not enough to discuss what representations of industry and technology were produced; some pertinent artistic issues need to be raised as well. While IA in Art is certainly a valuable contribution, future considerations of this subject should include discussion of the aesthetic, as well as historical, significance of the art represented. D. Scott Atkinson Mr. Atkinson is curator of collections at the Terra Museum of American Art in Chicago. Previously he was curator at the Queens Museum and assistant curator of collections at the Santa Barbara Museum of Art. He was curator of the show' “The New Society of American Artists in Paris, 1908—1912.” The Railway Station: A Social History. By Jeffrey Richards and John M. Mackenzie. New York: Oxford University Press, 1986. Pp. xix + 440; illustrations, notes, bibliography, index. $22.50. One of the most characteristic physical features of the industrial and technological revolution of the 19th and early 20th centuries, the TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 465 railway station (or railroad passenger depot, to use the American terminology) served many functions. There is a prolific literature on railway stations as structures, as characteristic architectural landmarks, and as part of the local, regional, national, and international trans­ portation infrastructure. This book treats all these aspects, but the emphasis is on the station as a reflection of the society that created it and that, in many regions of the world, still regards it as a symbol of its aspirations and a focus of its activities. In some ways, the station was the Industrial Revolution’s counterpart of the medieval cathedral and central urban square. Although they include much description of station architecture, with emphasis on styles as reflections of the locales’ cultures, Jeffrey Richards and John Mackenzie emphasize the multitude of roles per­ formed by railway stations in their respective societies and economic systems. Historical events often have taken place within and around the stations; many are mentioned and briefly discussed. The strategic roles of stations in wartime constitute two chapters. Ofequal or greater significance are the discussions of railway stations as stages for the human dramas enacted around arrivals and departures: the emo­ tional, social, economic, and political associations at and around the stations. Regional and societal differences are brought out throughout the book. The authors show how these differences are evidenced in station designs, spatial arrangements, and facilities. Especially signif­ icant is the chapter on “Class, Race...

Color in architecture

AbstractThe use of color characterized architecture in ancient Egypt, Greece, and Rome, in medieval cathedrals, and in the baroque, rococo, and even Victorian periods. Color was, to a great extent, banished in American architecture during the first third of the 20th Century and, after a brief revival of decoration in the 1930s, again during the second third up until the middle 1970s. Since then, however, the use of color in architecture has greatly accelerated, impelled by spiraling costs of construction, the energy crisis, and concern for conservation of limited resources and the environment.

Redwoods, Medieval Cathedrals and a Comment from Henry Thoreau

Redwoods, Medieval Cathedrals and a Comment from Henry Thoreau

The Cathedral and the Bridge: Structure and Symbol

When Montgomery Schuyler wrote in 1883 what was perhaps the first critical essay on a work of modern engineering as a work of art (the Brooklyn Bridge), he recognized the cultural similarity between the Gothic cathedrals of the 13th century and the long-span bridges of his own era.1 Just as the cathedrals symbolized the medieval world of stone, so did the bridges of the Industrial Revolution symbolize the new technological world of metal. Yet, while most educated persons of the 20th century will know something of medieval cathedrals and perceive such knowledge as essential to a liberal education, few are familiar with the great modern structures or would accord them a central place in higher learning. Here, we seek to explore two reasons for this cultural neglect. One is related to a misconception about the cathedral itself and the other to a mistaken belief that a deeper understanding of modern engineering is both inaccessible to the non-engineer and without intrinsic cultural value. Our aim is to show how historical study from an engineering perspective can correct such misunderstanding while making the technical questions intelligible to the general public.