0:05 - 0:08
We're in Beverley Minster in Beverley, England,
0:08 - 0:14
and we wanted to talk about the basic elements of a Gothic church. And probably
0:14 - 0:21
the most basic element that identifies the Gothic style is the use of a pointed,
0:21 - 0:24
not a round, a pointed arch.
0:24 - 0:29
The pointed arch was a Gothic innovation that allowed Gothic
0:29 - 0:31
architects to do what they really wanted to do,
0:31 - 0:33
which was to build larger and
0:34 - 0:39
brighter churches. Light was associated with God, with the divine.
0:39 - 0:41
It's a perfect metaphor.
0:41 - 0:46
Light has an almost magical quality in that it can pass through a solid,
0:46 - 0:49
it can pass through glass. Romanesque churches,
0:49 - 0:54
just before the Gothic period, required large thick
0:54 - 0:57
expanses of wall to hold up the ceiling,
0:57 - 1:00
usually a barrel-vaulted ceiling.
1:00 - 1:02
So from the rounded barrel vault,
1:03 - 1:06
the architects moved on to the groin vault.
1:06 - 1:10
The weight of a round arch pushes outward and requires
1:10 - 1:13
a lot of buttressing, a big solid wall underneath. The
1:13 - 1:19
pointed arch redirects its weight more directly downward so that
1:19 - 1:22
the supports can be thinner and can be more delicate.
1:22 - 1:27
And the Gothic architects brilliantly realized that that innovation would allow
1:27 - 1:31
them to be able to have less wall and more window.
1:31 - 1:34
The weight of the vault didn't need to come down onto
1:34 - 1:39
continuous walls but could come down onto four columns,
1:39 - 1:42
opening up not just the walls to windows,
1:42 - 1:45
but opening up the very space of the church itself.
1:45 - 1:49
We might ask them, how is the stone vaulting held up?
1:49 - 1:52
And the answer can be found in two places.
1:52 - 1:55
First, if you look in between the glass,
1:55 - 2:00
you can see a major structural element which comes down to the nave
2:00 - 2:02
in the form of a pier.
2:02 - 2:02
Now,
2:02 - 2:07
Gothic architects camouflaged the massiveness of their piers
2:07 - 2:11
by ornamenting them with delicate thin colonettes.
2:12 - 2:17
But this was a massive object that helps to support the stone vaulting above.
2:17 - 2:20
But there's another structural system that's at work.
2:20 - 2:22
Even with the pointed arch,
2:22 - 2:27
the vaulting of these churches still created lateral thrust that pushed outward.
2:27 - 2:28
And so the building had to be
2:28 - 2:34
contained, it had to be supported from the outside, it had to be buttressed.
2:34 - 2:39
And that's where we see one of the great features of Gothic architecture,
2:39 - 2:40
the flying buttress,
2:40 - 2:46
essentially a bracing in between the windows on the outside of the church.
2:46 - 2:50
And because they are relatively delicate and pierced,
2:50 - 2:54
they allow light to get to the windows to flood the interior with brightness.
2:54 - 2:57
When we look up along the wall
2:57 - 3:03
of a typical Gothic church, we usually see three parts. We see the pointed
3:03 - 3:05
arches that form the nave
3:05 - 3:08
arcade, we see above that the triforium,
3:08 - 3:13
and then above that, the clerestory, the level with windows. When we look at the
3:14 - 3:21
triforium, even there, we see the wall is pierced. Here in Beverley Minster, we see trefoil-
3:21 - 3:23
shaped arches and within that
3:23 - 3:25
trefoil arch, we see
3:26 - 3:26
a
3:26 - 3:26
quatrefoil,
3:26 - 3:31
and then below that yet another level of opening of
3:31 - 3:36
these short, pointed arches that are separated by columns.
3:36 - 3:40
So this layering that allows the wall to have a sense of depth.
3:40 - 3:43
All of this brings our eye upward.
3:43 - 3:46
It emphasizes the heavenly.
3:46 - 3:51
The intent of the Gothic church is to create a sense of the heavenly on earth.
3:51 - 3:54
If you imagine a typical person's home
3:55 - 4:00
in the 13th century, we imagine something rather dark and without a lot of windows.
4:00 - 4:05
And so coming into a space like this must have seemed truly miraculous.
4:05 - 4:11
It's even difficult, I think for us in the 21st century to imagine the workmanship,
4:11 - 4:17
the decades of labor and the enormous costs that
4:17 - 4:20
went into these buildings as places of worship,
4:20 - 4:23
of places of connection to the divine.