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