Artistic Integration in Gothic Buildings

Denise C. Jakal is an architectural writer in Edmonton.

This collection features papers by 17 international scholars
representing Canada, the United States, Great Britain, and Europe. Given
the trends that guided art historical methodology in the 1970s and
1980s, the focus on historiography and on the social and economic (as
well as liturgical) context is not surprising. What is different about
this collection is the level of collaboration between the essayists. The
papers, originally presented at a conference in 1989, were extensively
edited post-conference so as to incorporate some of the ideas and
criticisms that were exchanged between the scholars. The result is
cohesive, but far-reaching; the text is ripe with suggestions for
further investigation and research.

The opening papers survey the legacy of formalistic art historical
methodology and challenge contemporary scholars to reorient their
assumptions about the meaning of Gothic buildings both today and in the
past. Other essays focus on liturgical practices and individual
monuments, and attempt to reconstruct a model of the medieval response
to religious images, symbols, and narratives. One particularly
interesting essay analyzes the surprisingly hostile reaction of the lay
populace to the building of a cathedral on a number of sites.

A common theme to emerge from this fruitful collaboration is that we
will never succeed in reconstructing the original, unified meaning of a
Gothic building because, as much of the new research reveals, such a
thing never existed.