FadeTheButcher
07-06-2004, 03:59 AM
Just an interesting passage I came across this evening, thought I would share (especially for any anti-medieval VNNers who may be browsing):
During the Central Middle Ages, stone churches, abbeys, castles, and town halls were built in prodigious numbers. More stone was quarried in central medieval France alone than by pyramid and temple builders in the 3,000 year history of ancient Egypt. The most celebrated buildings of the Central Middle Ages are great and awesome: Chartes Cathedral, Mont St. Michel Abbey, Westminister Abbey, Reims Cathedral, Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, and many more. But throughout the European countryside are many smaller stone churches of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, built with skill and still beautiful today. Whether large or small, these churches and cathedrals are testaments to community pride as well as faith. This was particularly the case in towns, where churches expressed the expanding wealth and solidarity of townspeople, as well as their intense urban piety.
The cathedrals were designed by master masons, men trained by working with stone rather than university study. Only a few of them are known to us by name. Cathedral building representing an enormous investment in money and effort, and revenues were raised in a variety of ways -- through episcopal taxes, fund drives, and simple donations by townspeople, guilds, regional lords, and great princes and kings.
C. Warren Hollister and Judith M. Bennett, Medieval Europe: A Short History, 9th ed. (Boston: McGraw Hill, 2002), p.302
During the Central Middle Ages, stone churches, abbeys, castles, and town halls were built in prodigious numbers. More stone was quarried in central medieval France alone than by pyramid and temple builders in the 3,000 year history of ancient Egypt. The most celebrated buildings of the Central Middle Ages are great and awesome: Chartes Cathedral, Mont St. Michel Abbey, Westminister Abbey, Reims Cathedral, Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, and many more. But throughout the European countryside are many smaller stone churches of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, built with skill and still beautiful today. Whether large or small, these churches and cathedrals are testaments to community pride as well as faith. This was particularly the case in towns, where churches expressed the expanding wealth and solidarity of townspeople, as well as their intense urban piety.
The cathedrals were designed by master masons, men trained by working with stone rather than university study. Only a few of them are known to us by name. Cathedral building representing an enormous investment in money and effort, and revenues were raised in a variety of ways -- through episcopal taxes, fund drives, and simple donations by townspeople, guilds, regional lords, and great princes and kings.
C. Warren Hollister and Judith M. Bennett, Medieval Europe: A Short History, 9th ed. (Boston: McGraw Hill, 2002), p.302