Essay On Cathedrals

In the medieval town, the cathedral had to be bigger than any other building in the town. The cathedral had stained glass windows to make evident the glory of God to people who could not read. Cathedrals impacted Medieval Europe through their magnificent architecture, social impact, and political impact. To learn about cathedrals, one must first know the origin to the term ‘cathedral’. The word cathedral comes from ‘cathedra’ meaning bishop’s seat. When a cathedral was being built, the builders usually stayed permanently in the town as it was a long term project. Cathedrals were used not only as a place of worship, but guild meetings and public events were also held at a cathedral. Cathedrals were also destinations for pilgrimages in which pilgrims would go to the cathedral and worship. The pilgrim would also stay at the town where the cathedral was and pay for lodging and other amenities. By the middle of the fifteenth century, Gothic cathedrals were located in places such as Scandinavia. The first Gothic cathedral was the Abbey church of St. Denis, which was seven miles north of Paris.

Cathedrals were meant to have magnificent architecture. If a cathedral was cheap, the medieval society thought it would be demeaning God. Artisans who had little money themselves sought to beautify a cathedral. "If monastic life was intended to be austere, great monastic churches were quite the opposite. No expense was spared on building and decorating the sacred places in which monks worshipped. To do otherwise, it was thought, would be to demean God and thereby diminish the influence monks might gain in His eyes." (Scott 58) There are two main styles of cathedrals which are Romanesque and Gothic. Romanesque architecture was characterized by s...

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...ses were cleared out. The future location of the apse, which was a semicircular recess, was marked with a wooden peg. Another forge was built to make nails. For the roof, large pieces of wood, sometimes 60 feet long, had to be ordered from Scandinavia. The wood and stone from the forest and the quarry were shipped to the city’s port. The wood and stone would then be loaded onto carts that were wheeled to the construction site. The first foundation brick would be blessed by the bishop as it was lowered onto the foundation bottom. The mortar, made of a mixture of sand, lime, and water, was poured between each brick. As this happened, the master mason continuously checked the foundation with a level to make sure that the foundation was perfectly horizontal and perfectly vertical. Any mistake in the foundation could cause the wall that was placed on top to be unstable.