CHAPTER 3 : GOTHIC ARCHITECTURE

Romanesque architecture was in the wall. Gothic architecture will be the negation of the wall. Its replacement by glass walls : the stained glasses.

1. The ogive.

The invention of the ogival vault involves to make that, on the  vault point which receives the most pressure, the forces are returned toward the outside. The cross-vault (or groin vault) is produced by the intersection at right angles of two vaults. The vault weighs on that point. But, rather to weigh downwards like a direct force, perpendicular to the soil, it weighs sidelong. The weight is dispersed toward four directions.

2. The ogival vault.

The Gothic cathedral is a treatise of architecture. It is enough to see it, to understand the strengths game which is presents in the vault and the pillars. 

The ogival vault can take two forms : the domical vault, which is made of a succession of domes, because the cross vault  is highest than the top of the arches  formeret or doubleau.

The segmental vault which is given by the lifting of the arches formeret and doubleau, to align them on  the cross vault. So, the vault appears regular.

3. The erection of the wall.

Several solutions were used successively or simultaneously to erect the church. First, the formeret arch.

a. The formeret arch.

Drowned in the wall, parallel to the great arcade which  marks out the nave, span by span, opening  on the nave collateral, the formeret arch reinforces the structure, following the principle above exposed : throw the forces on both sides and, by the way, divide these forces by half, rather than to receive them perpendicular

b. The slimming down of the supports.

The reinforcement of the wall relies also on another kind of building. We can use the stone like it leaves the quarry : horizontal strata which promotes the elasticity. But we can also use the stone in another way : vertically, with vertical strata. This promotes the solidity. That building is most rigid. That is the Gothic builders solution. In the same time, the support is thinned and most light.

c. The first Gothic (12th century) : Saint-Denis, Noyon, Notre-Dame-de-Paris.

(Saint-Denis, in the 19th century)

c.1. - Marienval (below) : a Romanesque church with the first ogival vault.

c.2. - Laon -(below) : typical of the first Gothic : the four floors : the great arches, the gallery, the triforium and the high windows.

The first Gothic often appears like a perfect Romanesque architecture (Noyon, e.g.). Its essential characteristic is the development of the ogive, naturally, and also the arche formeret and the high gallery. That gallery is erected on the collateral, creating a floor which allows to support the nave wall and, by this way, to gain in height.

(From top to bottom : high windows, triforium, galleries, great arches)

4. The flying buttress and the classical Gothic (First half of the 13th century).

The appearance of the flying buttress allows to dispense with the erection of the galleries. The vault "weighs" on the wall, on the two sides. The gallery reinforced the sides. The flying buttress is taking the forces and drives them outside the wall in the abutment and, from there, to the soil.

Without the galleries, the wall is able to hollowing itself out more. It is replaced by a glass wall : the stained glasses.

(From top to bottom : flying buttress with double flight, wall under gutters, abutment load (pinnacle), abutment, collateral, nave)

-         Chartres, Reims, Amiens, Bourges, Le Mans.

(Extract of Le défi des Bâtisseurs - La cathédrale de Strasbourg  Arte 2012)

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5. The glass ark and the Radiating Gothic : (Second half of the 13th century).

  

The wall once disappeared, only subsist the "ribs" and, between them, the stained glasses. The Sainte Chapelle (below), in the Île de la Cité, in Paris, is a glass building (as those which are built nowadays). Here we are to the antipodes of the Romanesque architecture based on the stone wall. The rose window (a radiating sun which is the origin of the name attributed to the style of that period) is obviously one of the most beautiful and  most persuasive demonstration of that architecture so  elegant (in the sense where we say that a mathematical proof is elegant).

6. The stained glass.

a. General features : the symbolic.

The cathedral is doubtless an ark where are taking refuge those which want to be safe. But it is also the foreshadowing of the God's City. In that sense it has to appear like a jewellery box where abound precious stones. The stained windows give at the light which goes into the church, the same reflection as these stones.

Furthermore, because the stained windows often depict saints, they are as the Lord Court which is sitting with God, on both sides of the tabernacle where God himself resides.

b. Its evolution.

Furthermore, the stained glass evolution teaches us something essential concerning its signification. In the Romanesque period, the stained glass is little, it has not a lot of colors. Only a bit of light is able to enter the church by those windows. And also, because of these colors, it transforms that light.

More the disappearing of the wall and its replacement by the glass is progressing, more the colors are gaining intensity (often "dark" : red or blue). As a result the light doesn't go into the building more than before.  The increase of the stained glasses has not for aim to illuminate more the church.

The reason is that the aim of the stained glass is not the illumination but the transmutation of the earthly light   in a celestial light. In the God's House, the sun light doesn't take place. One has to a divine light. The stained glass is the philosopher's stone which following the transmutation.

7. The flamboyant Gothic. (End of 14th century and 15th century).

In the Classical Gothic we were able to follow the ribs of the columns and arches and, by that way,  in a glance, to understand the architecture of the cathedral. In the Flamboyant Gothic, the eye is lost in the complexity of the nerves which the aim is not architectural but decorative, even spectacular.

This Gothic is named "Flamboyant" because the columns and the arches, using the counter-curve, mime the grace (which will said “Mannerist” in the 16th century) of the rising flame. It is an exotic style, with a great lightness in which some wanted to see a "decadence" of the Gothic style.

(Oxford Divinity School)