1 00:00:04,880 --> 00:00:07,880 We're in Beverley Minster in Beverley, England, 2 00:00:07,889 --> 00:00:13,859 and we wanted to talk about the basic elements of a Gothic church. And probably 3 00:00:13,869 --> 00:00:21,260 the most basic element that identifies the Gothic style is the use of a pointed, 4 00:00:21,280 --> 00:00:24,180 not a round, a pointed arch. 5 00:00:24,360 --> 00:00:28,520 The pointed arch was a Gothic innovation that allowed Gothic 6 00:00:28,530 --> 00:00:31,319 architects to do what they really wanted to do, 7 00:00:31,329 --> 00:00:33,330 which was to build larger and 8 00:00:33,566 --> 00:00:39,145 brighter churches. Light was associated with God, with the divine. 9 00:00:39,155 --> 00:00:40,636 It's a perfect metaphor. 10 00:00:40,645 --> 00:00:45,805 Light has an almost magical quality in that it can pass through a solid, 11 00:00:45,816 --> 00:00:49,326 it can pass through glass. Romanesque churches, 12 00:00:49,335 --> 00:00:53,986 just before the Gothic period, required large thick 13 00:00:53,995 --> 00:00:57,486 expanses of wall to hold up the ceiling, 14 00:00:57,495 --> 00:00:59,765 usually a barrel-vaulted ceiling. 15 00:00:59,776 --> 00:01:02,145 So from the rounded barrel vault, 16 00:01:02,562 --> 00:01:06,122 the architects moved on to the groin vault. 17 00:01:06,132 --> 00:01:09,902 The weight of a round arch pushes outward and requires 18 00:01:09,912 --> 00:01:13,431 a lot of buttressing, a big solid wall underneath. The 19 00:01:13,442 --> 00:01:18,652 pointed arch redirects its weight more directly downward so that 20 00:01:18,662 --> 00:01:22,211 the supports can be thinner and can be more delicate. 21 00:01:22,222 --> 00:01:27,272 And the Gothic architects brilliantly realized that that innovation would allow 22 00:01:27,281 --> 00:01:30,832 them to be able to have less wall and more window. 23 00:01:30,938 --> 00:01:33,727 The weight of the vault didn't need to come down onto 24 00:01:33,737 --> 00:01:38,568 continuous walls but could come down onto four columns, 25 00:01:38,578 --> 00:01:41,998 opening up not just the walls to windows, 26 00:01:42,008 --> 00:01:45,117 but opening up the very space of the church itself. 27 00:01:45,188 --> 00:01:49,188 We might ask them, how is the stone vaulting held up? 28 00:01:49,197 --> 00:01:51,737 And the answer can be found in two places. 29 00:01:51,748 --> 00:01:54,877 First, if you look in between the glass, 30 00:01:54,888 --> 00:01:59,508 you can see a major structural element which comes down to the nave 31 00:02:00,043 --> 00:02:01,853 in the form of a pier. 32 00:02:01,863 --> 00:02:02,323 Now, 33 00:02:02,333 --> 00:02:06,723 Gothic architects camouflaged the massiveness of their piers 34 00:02:06,734 --> 00:02:11,044 by ornamenting them with delicate thin colonettes. 35 00:02:11,613 --> 00:02:17,244 But this was a massive object that helps to support the stone vaulting above. 36 00:02:17,253 --> 00:02:20,044 But there's another structural system that's at work. 37 00:02:20,054 --> 00:02:21,623 Even with the pointed arch, 38 00:02:21,634 --> 00:02:26,753 the vaulting of these churches still created lateral thrust that pushed outward. 39 00:02:26,764 --> 00:02:28,203 And so the building had to be 40 00:02:28,309 --> 00:02:33,649 contained, it had to be supported from the outside, it had to be buttressed. 41 00:02:33,690 --> 00:02:38,649 And that's where we see one of the great features of Gothic architecture, 42 00:02:38,660 --> 00:02:40,289 the flying buttress, 43 00:02:40,300 --> 00:02:46,289 essentially a bracing in between the windows on the outside of the church. 44 00:02:46,380 --> 00:02:49,830 And because they are relatively delicate and pierced, 45 00:02:49,839 --> 00:02:54,479 they allow light to get to the windows to flood the interior with brightness. 46 00:02:54,490 --> 00:02:56,889 When we look up along the wall 47 00:02:57,145 --> 00:03:02,535 of a typical Gothic church, we usually see three parts. We see the pointed 48 00:03:02,826 --> 00:03:04,626 arches that form the nave 49 00:03:04,735 --> 00:03:08,345 arcade, we see above that the triforium, 50 00:03:08,345 --> 00:03:13,455 and then above that, the clerestory, the level with windows. When we look at the 51 00:03:13,936 --> 00:03:20,776 triforium, even there, we see the wall is pierced. Here in Beverley Minster, we see trefoil- 52 00:03:21,175 --> 00:03:23,246 shaped arches and within that 53 00:03:23,475 --> 00:03:25,296 trefoil arch, we see 54 00:03:25,516 --> 00:03:25,526 a 55 00:03:25,682 --> 00:03:26,481 quatrefoil, 56 00:03:26,492 --> 00:03:30,501 and then below that yet another level of opening of 57 00:03:30,511 --> 00:03:36,222 these short, pointed arches that are separated by columns. 58 00:03:36,231 --> 00:03:39,942 So this layering that allows the wall to have a sense of depth. 59 00:03:39,951 --> 00:03:43,222 All of this brings our eye upward. 60 00:03:43,231 --> 00:03:45,582 It emphasizes the heavenly. 61 00:03:45,591 --> 00:03:51,242 The intent of the Gothic church is to create a sense of the heavenly on earth. 62 00:03:51,391 --> 00:03:54,261 If you imagine a typical person's home 63 00:03:54,707 --> 00:04:00,218 in the 13th century, we imagine something rather dark and without a lot of windows. 64 00:04:00,227 --> 00:04:05,108 And so coming into a space like this must have seemed truly miraculous. 65 00:04:05,117 --> 00:04:10,947 It's even difficult, I think for us in the 21st century to imagine the workmanship, 66 00:04:10,957 --> 00:04:16,726 the decades of labor and the enormous costs that 67 00:04:16,738 --> 00:04:20,377 went into these buildings as places of worship, 68 00:04:20,387 --> 00:04:22,928 of places of connection to the divine.