Gone Medieval - The World’s Greatest Cathedrals

Episode Date: October 1, 2022

The emergence of the Gothic style in twelfth-century France - with its pointed arches, flying buttresses and stained glass windows - triggered an explosion of cathedral-building across western Europe. But behind every great cathedral lay human stories of competition, triumph and tragedy.In today’s episode of Gone Medieval, Matt Lewis talks to Dr. Emma J. Wells, whose new book Heaven on Earth: The Lives and Legacies of the World’s Greatest Cathedrals reveals how 1000 years of cathedral-building shaped our world, influencing art, culture and society. The Senior Producer on this episode was Elena Guthrie. It was edited and produced by Rob Weinberg.For more Gone Medieval content, subscribe to our Medieval Monday newsletter here.There are hundreds of history documentaries, ad free podcasts and audiobooks to discover at History Hit. Subscribe today! To download, go to Android or Apple store. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

From long-loss Viking ships and kings buried in unexpected places to tales of murder, power, faith, and the lives of ordinary people across medieval Europe and beyond. Join me, Matt Lewis, Dr. Eleanor Jarniger, and some of the world's leading historians as we bring history's most fascinating stories to life, only on history hit. With your subscription, you'll unlock hundreds of hours of exclusive documentaries

with a brand new release every week exploring everything from the ancient world, to World War II. Just visit historyhit.com forward slash subscribe. Welcome to this episode of Gone Medieval. I'm Matt Lewis. Emma Wells is a returning guest who last came to speak to us about pilgrimages. And when I saw Emma had a new book on the way, I asked her to come back on to talk about that. I've been lucky enough to get a copy and it's one of the best looking books I've ever seen aside from the fact that it's packed with fascinating information. The book is called Heaven on Earth, the Lives and Legacies of the World's Greatest

Cathedrals. It looks at 16 examples to tell the story of the Gothic architecture that is so synonymous with some of the greatest churches and cathedrals in the world. Welcome back to God Medieval Emma. So why does this book in particular focus on Gothic architecture? Why Gothic? The reason that I chose Gothic, apart from it being my area of expertise, was when we tend to think cathedral, whether it's France, whether it's England, we conjure up a Gothic cathedral in our mind. Not only that the Gothic cathedral is representational of what medieval cathedrals were, that heaven on earth, as the book is called, but the idea of the heavenly Jerusalem as recounted in the book of Revelation, 21 to 22, which talks of the great gems and jewels and pearl-encrusted walls and

rivers of gold. That is what we think of when we see the maximum height and light of a Gothic cathedral. Not to mention they have very interesting stories. They're taking some very subtle hints from the Bible about how to decorate your church. The Bible essentially tells us that is what we're supposed to have. We're supposed to have a representation of God's Temple on earth, the heavenly Jerusalem. So yes, they are trying to imitate that as best they can in stone and glass form. So that's why pretty much every aspect has symbolic reasoning, if you will, behind all of it. whether it's the ceiling, whether it's the amount of panels in the stained glass window. So if we go right back to the very beginning of this, where do we get the word Gothic from when we apply it to architecture?

Following the Norman conquest, in England and France at least, we started to see the Romanesque, so leanings towards classical Roman forms, being usurbed. And then individual, particularly English and Northern French stamp put on our cathedles. And that's where sort of Gothic does arrive from. but Gothic as a stylistic term, I suppose, didn't exist. In the 16th century, there was a lot of critique about what the term Gothic meant. It was identified with the barbarian Goths. They'd overthrown the culture of ancient Rome in the 4th and 5th century.

Georgia Vassari in 16th century 2. He lambasted the Gothic style as monstrous, disorderly and barbarous, I believe, he said. So it had quite a negative connotation. So Gothic really had nothing to do with what we think of when we're. say goths. But what it grew out of was, but say Gothic, we think of Abbott Sousshaer, of Sondonis, which is just outside of Paris. And we say he's the father of Gothic. That's where Gothic was born, but it wasn't actually. We saw Gothic form. So particularly what we think of when we think of Gothic is pointed arches. Pointed arches, we go from Romanesque, semi-circular round arch to pointed

arches. That allows to build higher, broader, skeletal structures. But actually, we'd seen them even in the Persian Empire. We'd see them on Sustertian architecture. It was just that When we get to the early 12th century in Sondonis, that's where we have flying buttresses, vaulting, and the pointed arch all together. So he just put them all together, all the ingredients together, but we'd seen them before. So he's the celebrity chef who's just pulling all of this together for everyone to look at. Am I being unfair to him? No, I think that's a good term. Because Abbot Sougier has been credited, and Sondonie too, his abbey church there.

But that wasn't the case. We'd seen these forms, these ingredients of Gothic, if you will, being. used elsewhere throughout northern France, arguably over in England. So he just decided to put them all together. But we don't know who his master mason is, whether that's by chance or whether that's by reason. And so perhaps he didn't want his master mason known because he was really the sort of inventor behind it. Allowed him to claim all the credit. Yeah, he did.

And so why is Gothic important? I think now we could probably understand that, as I said before, it's kind of synonymous with cathedrals and churches when we look at them now. but more at the time, as it's emerging, why is it important? What are the advantages? Why does it replace that Romanesque, more sort of rounded structures that we were seeing before? Yeah, in very simple terms, we move from in sort of Norman Romanesque architecture in England, of course, the great hulking massive structures. If I say Dam Cathedral, it is a very, I don't want to use the word oppressive because by no means it is oppressive, but they're great oil drum round piers, the great semi-circuit. round arches, then if you compare that with York Minster, for example, or Wells Cathedral,

Salisbury Cathedral, it's long, pointy, horizontal, as well as vertical, but it's broad and it's tall, maximum height and light, as I say, these are the twin aims of Gothic. And if you think of Gothic too, you think of the great expanses of stained glass, which we just couldn't have before. So all of these ingredients allowed us to insert these great expanses of glass and therefore provide sort of Bibles for the Poor, sort of allegorical images for everyone, whether they understood medieval Latin or not. So if you were just the everyday layman or lame woman entering the nave of a great cathedral, you could understand to appoint, or at least have someone interpret to appoint these great stained glass windows. And that's what's so very important. Not only that, of course, they do represent the heavenly Jerusalem, which is your great jewels, your great gemstones. and in more sort of politico-economic terms, there was a lot more money at this time.

These are great powerhouses, fundraising dynamos as well. We wouldn't have the Gothic cathedral if it weren't for pilgrimage. The relics were the drivers for pilgrims coming to cathedrals and offering money on pilgrim silver. I always compare our great cathedrals with modern-day theme parks. The better attractions you have, the better saints you have or the better relics you have, the more people are going to offer and give money for the different rides, the different attractions. and that's the same thing. There's a lot of money going on.

These are fundraising powerhouses. And if we think of Westminster Abbey, it was £40,000 to make over that entire cathedral. Considering Henry II's budget was about $25,000 to $35,000 to $35,000 for the entire country for a year. That just shows just how important they were. Terrifying sums of money. Before we leave the structure of these cathedrals altogether, what does a flying buttress actually do?

It essentially brings the thrust outwards and downwards. So it disperses thrust. They look like great skeletal ribs or rib cage or even a spider's legs. And they sit encasing surrounding very tall, thin, light skeletal structures. And they allow for that cage-like appearance. If we didn't have them, we would have, as we saw it, for example, Durham, very much lower, quite dominant rib-volting great shafts rather than long, thin, wasted columnar shafts. So it just allows us to build what we want when we think of Gothic.

I was think of Gothic looking a lot like sort of elven architecture in Lord of the Rings. So I'm currently watching the Rings of Power. But, you know, elven architecture is always that delicate, thin stuff. So Gothic looks a lot like that to me. It's more delicate. It's more fine. It looks prettier than the great big hulking masses. Oh, you may have a debate on your hands because some people... That's my opinion. I think it looks pretty. I'm with you. I'm with you. I agree. It does something very different to Romanesque. Romanesque is extremely dominant.

In England, it's synonymous with Norman architecture, the great castles, the great strong holes of power. Cathedrals were very similar. They were built in much of a similar way. A lot of them were monastic, abbey churches or cathedrals. That's where they came from. It is very different. Obviously, as we get into the Gothic period, we get different subcategories of Gothic from early English right through to perpendicular and decorated in the middle. So you're right, it is decorative.

It is pretty, because it's so. decorative, so geometrical or whatever it might be, yeah. And so you mentioned that Gothic is about kind of height and light. Is that about building tall buildings that get closer to God, or is that about making a bigger space within the church for God to be present there? Or is it about all of those sorts of things? All of the above. Sujar, we know he saw stained glasses leading towards the one true light, which was Christ. They are symbolic sort of materials, if you will, but also you're right. And as the cathedral building sort of boom of the 13th century to the 15th century, arguably, it was all about competition and rivalry.

Got to keep up with the Joneses down the road or across the channel. And it is about the greater your temple to God, the quicker you might get to heaven, the more money you're lavishing on these great structures, whether it be in the former Chan Tree chapels or relics or whatever. That's also in and of itself physical manifestation on earth of your sort of commitment to God, commitment to Christ. So it's all of the above. It is really everything you can think of, but there's a great rivalry going on too, just in terms of who has a better cathedral. Nothing changes. You mentioned some of the subcategories of Gothic that emerge. How do those things

start to develop? Is that a case of personal local preferences? Or is that an effort to make them bigger and try things that will allow larger architecture as well? Both really. What we need to remember is it's not as though we have one particular Mason covering the work in each particular area. You have, for example, William of Sons, he commenced the work on the East End at Canterbury, and then unfortunately he had a fall as he was working on that, and William, the Englishman, he took over from him, and you can physically see the break between the two men's work, and William the Englishman, he worked off the first William's plans, but he put his own stamp on things. And another good example of this is William Joy. He was a master mason at a

Salisbury, he inserted strainer arches, a sort of model and template which became the strainer arches that we know of at Wells Cathedral, the great sort of angry owl eyes, as I call them, or scissors, some people call them. But he inserted a template at Solisbury first because at both, essentially, the builders put on larger towers, because, you know, you're trying to get the largest tower and closer to God than the original cathedral could manage. So unfortunately, again, you get thrust on a building that is not built for that, and these are quite boggy, marshy lands, both of them at Wells and Salisbury, and therefore you get piers moving, you get cracks in your fabric. What I'm saying is that you get itinerant masons, you get masons moving around, you get

Mason's picking up things, they've been across to France, they bring things back, and so it's a systematic process, that's how we get these sort of subcategories. It's not as though a Mason came along and said, I'm going to start building in perpendicular right now from today, and everyone, I'm going to create a template book, and everyone's going follow me. It's trends and fashions in architectural style that they've learned and clated over their troubles. Hi there. I'm Don Wildman, host of the new podcast American History Hit. Twice a week, I'll be exploring stories from America's past to help us understand the United States of today. Join me as I head back in time to witness Thomas Jefferson write the Declaration of Independence,

head to the battlefields during the Civil War. Visit Chief Poetton as he prepares for war with colonists, tour Central Park before it was Central Park, and a city in Tennessee, which helped build the atomic bomb. From famous battlefields to secret cities, from familiar names to lesser known events, I'll speak with leading experts from across the United States and beyond to bring American History to life. Join me every Monday and Thursday for American History Hit, a podcast by History Hit. I think it's fascinating how specialists like you can go into a building and pick out lines in the stone, changes in style that denote someone else has taken over and things like that. I think there's so much more to these buildings than we often think when we just go in

and we're awed by the whole thing, but we sometimes miss some of those stories. So I think your book is great at picking out some of those things. You go to these buildings and look up and see exactly what you're talking about in the book. I think that's a really good point because we tend to think, particularly churches, let's just say, that they were perfect, idyllic, utopian schemes of architecture. They're not at all. They were marred by mistake, miscalculation, bodge jobs, whatever you want to call them, fire. Atormons, I think it was five times it was marred by fire. So they are actually a sort of cornucopia of solutions and inventive minds and approaches to just things that happen when it comes to building. Things go wrong. And you have to think

of interesting ways of putting them together, particularly, as I say, the Wells Strainer Arches. They are one of the most innovative yet well-known pieces of architecture, perhaps. in our country, but that was a solution to a problem. Crossing was thinking. I think we just need to be aware that they aren't perfect by any means, but that's what makes them special. But it's fascinating that we can look at them and see the perfection when what we're actually seeing is people's hurried solution to, oh, I need something there. Whoops, I need something over there. Oh, we need something there. And also, people run out of money, so you have to make up other things. You might have to, I don't know, finish a nay very quickly because you're running out of money.

You might get some more money, so you get a great big window or something like that. or someone wants to insert a donor figure of themselves in one of the windows or a great chantry chapel or something like that, which we see at Winchester a lot. And then some of them spend a lot of money, and then the Reformation comes, and they spend a lot of money for not a lot. Yeah, ends all of that. Yes. You've chosen 16 places at which to tell the story of Gothic architecture and Gothic cathedrals.

How did you pick where you were going to focus your gaze? How do you choose those 16? I originally had 20. My publisher told me I had to cut them down because we would have had a book that was 1,000 pages. But the way I decided to pick them was, and this is why some people come along and say, why isn't X, Y or Z in the book, and it's simply because some of them I've already covered in quite a lot of detail, did my PhD on or something. But they're all interesting tales of construction.

Every cathedral has interesting tales, but the ones that are in the book have very interesting stories that perhaps we're not aware of, that the everyday person who maybe likes entering and visiting cathedrals, but they wouldn't know particularly that, for example, the cult of carts, when you get over to Shatra, etc. Possibly people laboured away. This is the everyday man and woman, and they carted loads and loads of wagons and toiled in their daily labours to build Shatra cathedral. So it's things like that. Some of them start with murder. There's a hang drawing and quartering, for example.

That's what Wells starts with. There's a couple of murders in there, actually. But my point is that there are interesting tales that spark things. Sometimes it might be an earthquake. Sometimes it might be a fire. Sometimes it might be a Norman conqueror. So what that also allows is the reader to see the connections between these cathedrals, that we're seeing the same people time and time again.

It is a very small insular circle of great powerhouses that were tied both between royalty and ecclesiastical authority as well. Just bringing it slightly back up to the modern day for a second, what do you think something like the reaction to the fire at Notre Dame a few years ago tells us about how we feel about those big Gothic masterpieces is now, you know, there was an instant clamour to rebuild it. Should it be more modern or should we just rebuild it? What do you think those kind of reactions to a disaster like that? Tell us about the way that Gothic architecture has endured. That history repeats itself, for one thing.

And the way that there was a great outcry, obviously, and grief, it's nothing we haven't seen centuries and centuries. And the sort of ongoing discussions we're still having as to how Notre Dame is being rebuilt or how it should be rebuilt is nothing we haven't seen before. and there was still great fiery debates and discussions over how an East End should have been rebuilt at Canterbury. There was a great fire at Canterbury too, almost a millennium before Notre Dame. What though it clearly says is, again, nothing has really changed, that we view Gothic architecture as one of the most important aspects of our heritage and history, and that they will never be repeated.

I don't perhaps think there will be another style that comes along and out does the Gothic period, but it just shows how much they are valued, which is a very important. a good thing. Interesting how those debates just cycle around all of the time. We're having the same discussions now as they were a thousand years ago. Do you build it in a different way? Do you just replace it exactly as it was? Can we improve it? Should we improve it? Should we leave it as it is? All of that just goes on and on and on for, like you say, a millennia. And it's who makes those decisions and should the everyday man and woman have any say in those decisions? Because very rarely did they? Sometimes they did, if they fundraise. It's the same sort of thing.

What it shows is that they are testaments to change and resilience, but also our ancestry and several ways, because cathedrals are the history of the world in some respects, particularly Western Europe, Western Christendom, yeah. And as you're researching a book like this, do many ordinary people, we talked about them a little bit just then, and we've mentioned a few names of Master Masons and Abbott Sousier and key players like that, and obviously the wealthy nobility and royalty that fund things they deliberately wanted it recorded. But did you manage to find many stories of the ordinary people, the carpenters and the masons who were actually chipping away at the stone. Are they hidden in the bigger picture of service to God, or do some of them emerge

in places? I suppose a bit of both, to be honest. We have great fabric roles that detail, who was Master Mason, how much was spent on X, Y and Z. The everyday stone hewer, Freeman, etc., bricklayer, foreman, we don't know a lot of them. We do know, I touched and I told you, about the cult of cart, so we know that there are even depictions in stained glass of everyday goings-on, more prosaic everyday scenes you find in stained glass. You find, for example, in Yorkshire, bell ringers, so we think there are lots of bell ringers in one of the windows, so bell ringers would have gifted that, etc. So you find them in hidden ways, I think, more than anything. And also women, we forget that the cathedral building tends to be dominated by male endeavours, but there were

women as well. There aren't really any recorded unless they are patrons, unless there's Alice who gave perbec marble, for example, at Salisbury. So a lot of them are nobility. aristocratic women, but we know that they undertook the more menial everyday tasks, lugged water, dug ditches, those sorts of things. They weren't masters of their craft, but they were there. So I've tried to tease out as best I can mentions where I can and analyze and interpret the accounts and the records and figure out there were important everyday men and women. And so I've tried to bring them to the fore as best I can. And did people like that who weren't necessarily, they probably, I'm sure, knew that

they weren't going to be remembered as part of the workforce there. Did you find evidence of them leaving traces of themselves in the sculpture or the stone work? Is there markings that point to the fact that even if we don't know their names or who they were, that people were there working very hard and were either proud of what they were involved in or keen to be remembered in some way? We have some people who are remembered and some who aren't. So we need to remember that the majority of our cathedrals are built over several hundred years.

Salisbury is an anomaly at 38 years. Shatra wasn't much more than that. But York Minster is three to four hundred years, really. And is a cathedral ever finished? Say no. Cologne, for example, never really finished. So some of the master masons, we find little statues of them. We find them in capitals, etc.

Of course, there are mason's marks, which shows essentially that mason had hewn that sewn or put that together or whatever. And graffiti, obviously, as well, is another increasingly popular topic of research, which shows that people were not only the everyday layman and woman, but the workers, they make their marks. in different ways. And in Stained Glass 2, in the marginalia, you find expressions of the I was idea as well. Lots of different ways that we do find people making their mark. But for the majority, Master Masons realise they would never see their constructions finished in their lifetime. And that was

fine for them. They were building heaven on earth. So to some extent, I guess it's a spiritual investment, isn't it? You know, you may not see the actual fabric of the building completed, but you've put enough in to hopefully please God. Exactly. And what they're doing, their work, is far more important, far more significant than leaving their legacy on the stonework, really. I know we probably find that quite difficult to understand today, but if you're building a cathedral, you are part of history, but part of biblical history to them. You are part and parcel of Christianity, and you've made your mark. Building a temple to God is what's most important to you, not just you as a lowly person. Don't even wrong, particularly when it comes to patrons,

they like to put their name on things. They like to have their donor figures, royalty and nobility, yes, they did like to put their marks on things as big and as obvious sometimes as they could. That's a little bit different. But in terms of the everyday masons, they were a little bit more discreet. We've spoken on God Medieval before about this in relation particularly to books and authors and writers and things like that, that they weren't necessarily keen to be identified. It's quite a modern phenomenon to want your name attached to things like that. Because in the Middle Ages, if you're writing a book, it's normally a religious book. It's in service to God, it's not about you. And I guess the same is true of the people building the churches.

It isn't about John did this. It's about John made a spiritual investment and contributed to this massive project. Yeah, Westminster Abbey is a great example of this. It's what's going on in France. Look at my French counterpart's building. I need to build better, that sort of thing. Henry the second thing, that's exactly what is going on. Salisbury, the project managers, we would call him today, Elias of Deerum. He had been over at Canterbury. He helped. the design of St Thomas Beckett Shrine at Canterbury, and then he was entrusted with dispersing, if you will, some of the engrossments of Magna Carta in 1215,

brought it back to Old Cairum, and then he had a hand in the building of what was New Serum, Salisbury Cathedral now, the new site. And the reason that New Cairn was built was because there was tension. There was essentially Old Serum, the hill fort there, where the cathedral and castle were. It was too small for two big men, essentially,

for two big personalities. And so they moved it down to, near Salisbury Plain. So there's a lot of undercurrent. Faith is certainly by no means driving these cathedrals. It is rivalries competition. We can just look, for example, at Wells Cathedral. They keep losing their cathedral's seat to Bath and Glastonbury as well. They're wanting a great cathedral. Bishop Fitzjocelyn, he thinks, no, I want my cathedral back. I want this to be the seat of the Dioces. I have to build a cathedral that's fitting enough. So that drives him. So there are a load of complex reasons why.

fascinating I guess I'm going to end on the impossible question if you could suggest that the listener goes to one Gothic cathedral one of the cathedrals in your book which one would you pick? Or do I have to... That's entirely up to you. There's 16 in the book.

I mean, there's even more to choose... I'll tell you what, while you think of that, is the one that you regret having to miss out? Yeah, quite a few. San Chappelle, technically not a cathedral, but it is a fascinating building in and of itself. Milan, very interesting,

sort of marmorial structure. Durham as well, Litchfield, Lincoln, all of them, because this is the point that they all have interesting histories. They all have some sort of unique vision or quirkiness or tale. But in terms of the one I would say to go, oh, God, this is so hard. I usually will say probably Salisbury because it's become a personal favourite because it has hidden depths. But I'm going to say Canterbury. I'm going to be controversial this time and I know everyone saying, oh, everyone's going to Canterbury Cathedral, but it's not just about Thomas Beckett. There's so much more, there's so much that we don't know about Canterbury still. You can really see from Romanesque the end of Gothic in one building at both and you can see the importance and the drive

behind creating legacy and history to your own building and that driver of the cult of Saints and Pilgrimage, just very simply. So Canterbury with a side note to several other places. I mean, it just goes to show the wealth of fascinating places that there are out there. And I think hopefully, you know, listeners will walk into these places. They'll grab a copy of your book. They'll have a good peruse and they'll walk into these places and see them in a slightly different light and look at different things than they've looked for before.

That's really what I wanted from the book was that you go into a cathedral and think, I never knew that. And I've just noticed that. Yeah. Well, thank you so much for joining us again, Emma. That's been absolutely fascinating. Thank you for having me. It's a pleasure. Heaven on Earth, the lives and legacies of the world's greatest cathedrals is out now,

so you can grab a copy of one of the most interesting and beautiful books you'll see this year and learn all about Gothic architecture. You can join Dr Kat Jarman on Tuesday for another brand new episode. Don't forget to also subscribe wherever you get your podcasts from and to tell your friends and family that you've gone medieval. If you get a moment, please do drop us a review or rate us. anywhere that you listen to your podcasts, including Spotify now, it really does help new listeners to find us.

If you're enjoying this podcast and looking for a bit more medieval goodness in your life, then subscribe to our Medieval Monday's newsletter. Just follow the links in the show notes below. Anyway, I'd better let you go. I've been Matt Lewis, and we've just gone medieval with history hits.