0:00:04.880,0:00:07.880 We're in Beverley Minster in Beverley, England, 0:00:07.889,0:00:13.859 and we wanted to talk about the basic elements of a Gothic church. And probably 0:00:13.869,0:00:21.260 the most basic element that identifies the Gothic style is the use of a pointed, 0:00:21.280,0:00:24.180 not a round, a pointed arch. 0:00:24.360,0:00:28.520 The pointed arch was a Gothic innovation that allowed Gothic 0:00:28.530,0:00:31.319 architects to do what they really wanted to do, 0:00:31.329,0:00:33.330 which was to build larger and 0:00:33.566,0:00:39.145 brighter churches. Light was associated with God, with the divine. 0:00:39.155,0:00:40.636 It's a perfect metaphor. 0:00:40.645,0:00:45.805 Light has an almost magical quality in that it can pass through a solid, 0:00:45.816,0:00:49.326 it can pass through glass. Romanesque churches, 0:00:49.335,0:00:53.986 just before the Gothic period, required large thick 0:00:53.995,0:00:57.486 expanses of wall to hold up the ceiling, 0:00:57.495,0:00:59.765 usually a barrel-vaulted ceiling. 0:00:59.776,0:01:02.145 So from the rounded barrel vault, 0:01:02.562,0:01:06.122 the architects moved on to the groin vault. 0:01:06.132,0:01:09.902 The weight of a round arch pushes outward and requires 0:01:09.912,0:01:13.431 a lot of buttressing, a big solid wall underneath. The 0:01:13.442,0:01:18.652 pointed arch redirects its weight more directly downward so that 0:01:18.662,0:01:22.211 the supports can be thinner and can be more delicate. 0:01:22.222,0:01:27.272 And the Gothic architects brilliantly realized that that innovation would allow 0:01:27.281,0:01:30.832 them to be able to have less wall and more window. 0:01:30.938,0:01:33.727 The weight of the vault didn't need to come down onto 0:01:33.737,0:01:38.568 continuous walls but could come down onto four columns, 0:01:38.578,0:01:41.998 opening up not just the walls to windows, 0:01:42.008,0:01:45.117 but opening up the very space of the church itself. 0:01:45.188,0:01:49.188 We might ask them, how is the stone vaulting held up? 0:01:49.197,0:01:51.737 And the answer can be found in two places. 0:01:51.748,0:01:54.877 First, if you look in between the glass, 0:01:54.888,0:01:59.508 you can see a major structural element which comes down to the nave 0:02:00.043,0:02:01.853 in the form of a pier. 0:02:01.863,0:02:02.323 Now, 0:02:02.333,0:02:06.723 Gothic architects camouflaged the massiveness of their piers 0:02:06.734,0:02:11.044 by ornamenting them with delicate thin colonettes. 0:02:11.613,0:02:17.244 But this was a massive object that helps to support the stone vaulting above. 0:02:17.253,0:02:20.044 But there's another structural system that's at work. 0:02:20.054,0:02:21.623 Even with the pointed arch, 0:02:21.634,0:02:26.753 the vaulting of these churches still created lateral thrust that pushed outward. 0:02:26.764,0:02:28.203 And so the building had to be 0:02:28.309,0:02:33.649 contained, it had to be supported from the outside, it had to be buttressed. 0:02:33.690,0:02:38.649 And that's where we see one of the great features of Gothic architecture, 0:02:38.660,0:02:40.289 the flying buttress, 0:02:40.300,0:02:46.289 essentially a bracing in between the windows on the outside of the church. 0:02:46.380,0:02:49.830 And because they are relatively delicate and pierced, 0:02:49.839,0:02:54.479 they allow light to get to the windows to flood the interior with brightness. 0:02:54.490,0:02:56.889 When we look up along the wall 0:02:57.145,0:03:02.535 of a typical Gothic church, we usually see three parts. We see the pointed 0:03:02.826,0:03:04.626 arches that form the nave 0:03:04.735,0:03:08.345 arcade, we see above that the triforium, 0:03:08.345,0:03:13.455 and then above that, the clerestory, the level with windows. When we look at the 0:03:13.936,0:03:20.776 triforium, even there, we see the wall is pierced. Here in Beverley Minster, we see trefoil- 0:03:21.175,0:03:23.246 shaped arches and within that 0:03:23.475,0:03:25.296 trefoil arch, we see 0:03:25.516,0:03:25.526 a 0:03:25.682,0:03:26.481 quatrefoil, 0:03:26.492,0:03:30.501 and then below that yet another level of opening of 0:03:30.511,0:03:36.222 these short, pointed arches that are separated by columns. 0:03:36.231,0:03:39.942 So this layering that allows the wall to have a sense of depth. 0:03:39.951,0:03:43.222 All of this brings our eye upward. 0:03:43.231,0:03:45.582 It emphasizes the heavenly. 0:03:45.591,0:03:51.242 The intent of the Gothic church is to create a sense of the heavenly on earth. 0:03:51.391,0:03:54.261 If you imagine a typical person's home 0:03:54.707,0:04:00.218 in the 13th century, we imagine something rather dark and without a lot of windows. 0:04:00.227,0:04:05.108 And so coming into a space like this must have seemed truly miraculous. 0:04:05.117,0:04:10.947 It's even difficult, I think for us in the 21st century to imagine the workmanship, 0:04:10.957,0:04:16.726 the decades of labor and the enormous costs that 0:04:16.738,0:04:20.377 went into these buildings as places of worship, 0:04:20.387,0:04:22.928 of places of connection to the divine.