(8 min read) To fully appreciate Gothic architecture, you must adopt an anthropological approach, stepping into the medieval worldview to understand how these cathedrals embodied the spiritual and cultural beliefs of a society very different from yours.
“Chartres is made of stone and glass. But it is not just stone and glass; it is a cathedral, and not only a cathedral, but a particular cathedral built at a particular time by certain members of a particular society. To understand what it means, to perceive it for what it is... you need to understand also — and, in my opinion, most critically — the specific concepts of the relations among God, man, and architecture that, since they have governed its creation, it consequently embodies.” — Clifford Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures *
You don’t need to know any history to be floored by a Gothic cathedral’s soaring spaces and the ethereal light that fills them. And you don’t need to be able to identify the figures and narratives in the art that adorns the architecture in order to appreciate it on a formal and technical level.
But without some historical context, and without some understanding of the ideas that drove medieval Christianity, your appreciation of Gothic architecture will remain superficial. In fact, I would go further and say that to truly appreciate Gothic architecture, you need to take an anthropological approach to the people who created and first used the cathedrals, because they were very different than us moderns.
“The past is a foreign country. They do things differently there.” — LP Hartley, The Go-Between
Being incapable of disengaging from your contemporary worldview and value judgements when visiting a historical site or looking at art from a previous epoch is like visiting a foreign country but never leaving the tourist zone. At best you will leave with a superficial understanding, but it is just as likely that you will leave with a misunderstanding.
Even a conservative Catholic today would probably find more common ground with a contemporary Buddhist from Japan than they would a medieval Christian. Despite the drastically different religious beliefs, they would share a deep well of modern, globalized presuppositions about the world and live similar lives of relative convenience.
Similarly, if you want to get a feel for how medieval Christians worshipped in a Gothic cathedral when they were first built, you’d likely be better served by observing the behaviors associated with Shaivite or Vaishnavite (ie, “Hindu”) temples and pilgrimages in India (figures 1 & 2, for example) than by observing a post-Vatican II Mass in a modern building.
Medieval Europe (figure 3) was a sharp contrast to the comfortable and convenient world us substack readers likely live in, even those who live in the same European geography.
For example, the medieval European world was one where:
Pain was a constant of life. There were no effective pain or allergy medications, for example, and medical interventions were as likely to cause additional problems as anything else.
Death was a constant presence. For example, infant mortality rates were over 25%, and probably half of your childhood friends would not survive to adulthood. The average mother probably had a 5-10% chance of dying during childbirth (over the multiple pregnancies she was expected to have).
There were three orders to society — those who prayed, those who fought, and those who worked — and your place in this order was divinely ordained and set for life.
Violence and class oppression was both endemic and accepted: inalienable human rights did not exist and the “pursuit of happiness” was frowned upon (if even comprehensible).
All roads were dirt, town streets were filled with feces and garbage; getting “clean” in any modern sense was essentially impossible.
Privacy was virtually non-existent, as people lived a half dozen or more to a small house (probably with a dirt floor) and perhaps a half dozen to a room; gossip reigned in small villages (and still does, actually).
All books and images were handmade (figure 4), and all music was live. Owning a single book was a rarity, and professional musicians did not exist outside of royal courts.
Church and State (though “states” as we think of them most certainly did not exist) were deeply intertwined, and what was permissible to believe (and even think) was tightly controlled. This kind of thought control is easier than you might think when privacy doesn’t exist and when there are few books and no forms of mass media.
The entire universe — a set of celestial spheres surrounding the earth and influencing all actions on it — was understood to be a few thousand years old and likely to end very soon, with the Second Coming of Christ.
Your personal universe was very small. Travel was slow, usually on foot, and very few people traveled more than a few dozen miles on a regular basis.
The world was animated with invisible spirits that could affect you for good or (more likely) ill; forests were mysterious and dangerous places, for example, not a place for recreational hikes.
The above is just a handful of examples off the top off my head that form sharp contrasts from modern life, but it should suffice to give you a hint of the different worldview you might have had were you born in the 12th or 13th centuries instead of the 20th or 21st.
It’s a world where:
the grandeur and beauty of a Gothic cathedral — especially in concert with the sounds, smells and sights of liturgical ceremonies — would have been virtually unbelievable: almost proof itself of the religious beliefs it embodied.
if you had a serious problem, it would have made sense to travel to a place like this and seek out help from the invisible powers and agents that were located there.
I am not saying you personally need to accept the beliefs of these people that lived some six to nine centuries ago, but being able to step back from your own worldview — and the presuppositions that come with it — and at least imagine their belief system and empathize with the painful and precarious nature of life back then is an important first step towards taking what I am calling an “anthropological approach” in the appreciation Gothic architecture and art.
I used the example above of a conservative Catholic for my contrasts between a modern and medieval person because they, along with Orthodox Christians, are the people most equipped in the modern world to at least respect medieval Roman Christianity.
The veneration of Mary and the saints — which suffuses Gothic architecture — will seem off-putting to most Protestants. Even more so, agnostics and atheists are prone to seeing every piece of art inside — if not the very notion of a cathedral itself — as superstitious nonsense.
If you are of these more modern persuasions, I’d like to encourage you to at least temporarily set your view of the world aside when you enter a Gothic cathedral or read one of my photo essays about medieval iconography, of which many will be coming over the next few months.
On the other hand, if you are a contemporary Catholic or other form of modern “believer,” I would similarly encourage you to take an anthropological and nonjudgemental approach when it comes to religious traditions that are not your own. As one interested in symbolic thinking across different cultures and throughout history, I have a strong interest in all forms of religion, and I find it instructive to do comparative analyses from time to time — often the best way to understand one way of thinking is in comparison to another. So I will also be doing many comparative studies between Christian and other religious traditions in upcoming essays.
For example, my next photo essay is going to be about medieval Marian veneration and the types of Marian iconography (figure 5, for example) that you are likely to find in Gothic churches, both then and today.
And the photo essay after that is going to be about the way in which the Virgin Mary embodies the “Great Mother” archetype (for example, figure 6), which involves exploring “mother goddesses” from throughout history and across the whole world, and seeing how all of them fit into deeper patterns and forms of veneration than any single tradition.
There is more to the anthropological approach than just the above, and I will delve into more from time to time in upcoming essays — to some extent, simply learning about the beliefs behind medieval art and the daily lives of people who lived then will help you attain this approach. In the meantime, this essay is intended as a preface to the two essays I just mentioned and others I will do over the upcoming months about the art and imagery of Gothic cathedrals.
And, just as importantly — as “symbolic anthropologist” Clifford Geertz described in the opening quote of this essay — Gothic cathedrals are not just stone and glass, but the embodiment of a worldview and culture that cannot otherwise be readily accessed today. Learning to fully appreciate them will enhance your understanding of human history and the world’s cultural heritage.
~
References
*— Geertz, p33
Geertz, Clifford. The Interpretation of Cultures: Selected Essays. 1973.
Hartley, L.P. The Go-Between. 1953.