Moving now from the origin of the word to the structure itself,

let's look at the basic parts of a Gothic cathedral beginning with the crypt.

The crypt is usually the oldest part of the cathedral,

and is like an underground Chapel.

Though the crypt, as in this image of Saint Denis, might contain windows.

The word comes from the grip Kryptein,

"to hide" and the space is used for burial.

And as the most secure part of the church,

it was also used to house precious relics.

Remember Abbot Suger's anxiety,

his concern that the relics of Saint Denis be kept safe from the crowds on

holy days when the cathedral might be overcrowded?

Above the crypt, we find the apse,

that rounded eastern most part of

the cathedral which may be surrounded by radiating chapels,

and the choir which stands between the altar and the apse,

which together make up the short part of the vertical vector of the cross.

As is clear in this diagram of Chartres Cathedral.

Here we see a picture of the choir and the apse of Saint Denis.

And in this cross-section,

we see the relation of the crypt to the choir.

On the western side of the altar lies the nave,

a word which comes from the Latin navus, meaning boat.

The nave is the place where parishioners worshipped.

The nave being separated from the altar and the choir by a choir screen.

Members of the clergy would have worshipped on the choir side of such a barrier,

while ordinary people, the community of the faithful,

would have stood in the nave.

Many of the medieval choir screens have disappeared,

destroyed by the energy of revolutionaries intent upon removing barriers of

difference between the clergy and even high church officials and the common people.

Here, however, we see a drawing of the choir screen that

once stood in Notre-Dame in Paris.

The cathedral is built in the form of a cross.

The vertical section consisting of the apse and

the choir in the east and the nave west of the altar,

is crossed by two northern and southern arms of the transept,

which at its point of coincidence is known as the transept crossing.

All around the nave, the transepts and the choir,

we find either a singular double vaulted passageway

known as the side aisles around the nave,

and the ambulatory around the choir and apse.

The ambulatory permits the circulation of

people on and around the radius of the cathedral.

And if any of you have ever been to Notre-Dame in

Paris or another Cathedral while mass is being conducted,

you recognize that you can,

like a medieval pilgrim,

still make the tour of the outer edge of the inside of

the building without interrupting the religious service.

We have already encountered some of

the important changes from Romanesque to Gothic churches.

We have, for example, seen how gracefully tall the new buildings are.

How the massively thick Romanesque walls with few windows are

replaced by thinner Gothic walls containing stained glass,

which create the effect not only of lightness but of the light which is in

the thinking of the builders of the high Gothic cathedrals the equivalent of godliness.

In reaching such heavenly heights,

we can distinguish four distinct levels.

Not all four are always there, but when they are,

these are the four seen in this photo of the Cathedral of

Laon from the south side of the choir and the south transept from across it.

We see the main arcade on the bottom level,

and above the main arcade the tribunes,

above the tribune the triforium.

And on the very top, the clerestory windows.

Gothic sculpture departs from

the naturalistic scroll and vine work carved in by relief on Romanesque arches,

and seems to stand not only in

much higher relief but to be detached from the surface of the structure,

as in this example of the central portal of the west facade of Chartres.

Notice how what were known as

the jamb statues as well as the carvings on and all around the tympanum,

stand freely on their own against the columns and the arches to which they are attached.

It is as if they had been carved elsewhere and then put in place.

This is especially true if we compare the Gothic figural carving of Chartres with

the decorative Romanesque designs around the arched entrance to the Church of Aulnay.

Indeed, one of the stained glass donor windows,

that of the masons at Chartres,

shows the carving of just such a figure from the rough hewing of stone on the left,

to the detail work on the right.

Gothic sculpture and building are combined in

something unthinkable in the Romanesque fortress churches.

That is, the delicate tracery work which turns parts of

an entire building into some version of a work of

sculpture as in this example of the south portal of Notre-Dame.

Tracery reaches its pinnacle in Strasbourg Cathedral from the late 13th century.

Note too that tracery still survives as a style even in American neo-Gothic,

as in this example of Yale's Harkness Tower or the entrance to Sterling Library.

Gothic cathedrals are covered in sculpture of the most varied types,

like these capital freezes of Chartres,

the towers of Laon with their impressive figures of oxen at the top,

in homage to the beasts of burden which hauled the stone to build the cathedral,

to the gargoyles of Notre-Dame or what were

known as the dado or stamped figures on the south side of

Notre-Dame and which supposedly depicts scenes of

student life in Paris' medieval student or Latin Quarter.

We will return to these different types of

sculpture in the course of our next time together.

What we should keep in mind from today's lesson

is that while Romanesque churches seem heavy and inert,

Gothic cathedrals are busy and active,

full of visual and perspectival energy.

It is not an exaggeration to speak of

the optical relativism of Gothic versus the stolid set quality of Romanesque.

What one sees in a Gothic church is a function of where one

is situated relative to a field of vision.

Optically, Romanesque churches are frontal,

whereas Gothic cathedrals are organized along a much more complex visual plane.

Romanesque style establishes boundaries while the Gothic church abolishes them.

And looking at Romanesque churches,

one is either outside or inside.

Gothic structures move from outside in,

and once inside they embrace the viewer as they seem to come

forward from the core of the wall in continuous recession,

as we can see in this image looking into the arcade and tribunes of Notre-Dame in Paris.

The overall effect of Gothic is not seizable by the eye in a single moment

from a single perspective which seems to consist of a series of overlapping planes,

such that what one sees is a function of where one is

standing in relation to the myriad of visual possibilities.

In our next time together,

we shall examine in greater detail some of

the technical breakthroughs that went into Gothic cathedral building.

6.3 Gothic

Age of Cathedrals

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