Gothic Period Cultural and Construction

Gothic Period

Cultural and Construction History of the Gothic Period (13th to 15th Century)

Cultural Environment

Historians generally define the periodization of the history of Western Europe during the Middle Ages into three eras: the Early Middle Ages (5th-11th Centuries AD); the High Middle Ages (1000-1300 AD); and the Late Middle Ages (1300-1500). Construction of the great Gothic cathedrals began during the High Middle Ages, which was an era that experienced a "dramatic re-emergence of urban life and an increasing sophistication in secular culture" (Singman xi). Major events in the High Middle Ages include the conquest of England by the Normans in 1066, the conflict between the popes and emperors for political control of Europe, and the Crusades. Indeed, the very idea of Europe during the Middle Ages was based on conflict between Christendom and Islam, although no unity existed between the Latin Christians of the West and Greek Orthodox Christians in the East (Delanty 17). In the Late Middle Ages, the Little Ice Age, the great famine and Black Death wiped out 40-50% of the population, and perhaps more in some areas. In addition, the invention of gunpowder and firearms reduced the influence of the knights and the code of chivalry, while social, religious and political crises like the peasant revolts, the Great Schism and Babylonian Captivity challenged the power of the nobility and Catholic Church. Historians have studied the Late Middle Ages far more than the earlier periods, in part because more sources are available, although no overall paradigm exists that "integrates the multiple facets of culture and society of western Europe" (Cantor 563). By 1500, the Reformation, the printing press and the beginning of colonization in Asia, Africa and the Americas ushered in the end of the Middle Ages.

Medieval society was characterized by the lack of a centralized state and the political and economic power of the landed aristocracy, which also controlled the military. This feudal system was based of "personal relationships like kingship and patronage" rather than abstract institutions like bureaucracies and corporations (Singman 1). High nobles in England in the 13th Century with an income of 5,000 pounds per years were earning five hundred times more than the poor, and even though landless knights existed there was still a tremendous gulf between commoners and the elite. Aristocrats were about 1% of the population in Western Europe, "but their power and influence were far greater than their actual numbers" (Singman 4). Wealthy capitalists and bourgeoisies began to emerge in the Late Middle Ages, while the labour shortage after the Black Death undermined serfdom and created a class of wealthy peasant farmers, gentry and the lower bourgeoisie. In spite of this, and the peasant and artisan rebellions of the 14th and 15th Centuries, the aristocracy remained in control. Even during the Italian Renaissance, "the great merchant families modelled the political behaviour of the northern grandees" (Cantor 564).

Gothic art and architecture evolved out of the Romanesque style in the early thirteenth century. The development began in France and spread throughout Europe, but centred in Northern and Western Europe. Many European cathedrals and abbeys are Gothic, but this architectural approach is also evident in universities, castles, guild halls, town halls, and palaces. The Gothic provided a natural stylistic transition from the Romanesque to the Renaissance. Its popularity lasted into the fifteenth century (Charles).

Relationship to Previous Periods

The transition from Romanesque to Gothic is not marked by an unambiguous event or change; rather, it was a gradual progression. Gothic figures slowly became more animated and precise in relation to backgrounds or scenery. As with the Romanesque, the Gothic kept the predominance of religious subject matter in its sculptural, painted, and glass expressions. In architecture, the Gothic style continued the Romanesque challenge of building larger cathedrals (Gothic Art). However, its emphasis was different. The Gothic Period was typified by "vast space and lots of light to create an impression of reverence" (Branner 327 -- 33). This contrasted with the dark, bulky, and gloomy Romanesque churches.

The Gothic style correlated with social and cultural changes throughout Europe. Its foundations lay in Christianity, of course, and monumental Gothic art and sculpture was used educationally to tell biblical stories. Yet it arose, as did the Romanesque, in a European environment of increased urbanisation, proliferation of the university system, and facilitation of trade within Europe and externally. Europe was moving toward a capital-based economy. Increased literacy and the establishment of a middle class that could afford to patronize art propelled Gothic into the mainstream (Cahill). Craftsmen artists experienced a new level of exposure.

Contribution(s) to Western Civilisation

The Gothic style, which is still in evidence today, shaped human perceptions. The Gothic became a different way of viewing the human condition. Punter describes this difference skilfully:

In painting and sculpture, just as in literature and poetry, figures become more animated and lifelike, more realistically aligned to the background, and without the exaggeration of previous ages. The use of light and shadow to define the subject in art, the use of subtleness of character in literature all gave the Gothic artist a more humanistic palate from which to draw -- certainly a legacy that helped transition from the overt focus on religiosity to a more secular approach to human culture. (Punter)

Beyond this, the idea that the average household could utilise art such as woodcuts to decorate their homes was an important movement away from feudal drudgery toward a more humanistic appreciation of life (Lilley).

2. Scientific Environment

Only in the West did science become institutionalized in universities during the Middle Ages, which never occurred in China or any of the Islamic societies. Many historians of science regarded the Scientific Revolution of the 16th and 17th Centuries as a radical break of discontinuity with medieval natural philosophy. After all, Galileo denounced Scholasticism and the physics of Aristotle as "the enemy of the new science" (Grant 168). Nevertheless, medieval scholars laid the foundations for modern science by the translation of the Greek and Arabic texts into Latin, and their attempts to reconcile the philosophy of Plato and Aristotle with Christianity. All the new universities founded in Paris, Oxford, Padua and Bologna after 1200 were "different from anything the world had ever seen" (Grant 172). Their curricula were all derived from Greek and Arabic documents and remained in place for the next 500 years. Natural philosophy was at the core of the medieval curriculum, and was not only accepted by the Catholic Church but became accepted orthodoxy. This was widely disseminated throughout Western Europe, and even though the new Renaissance science came into being mostly outside the older universities, these "venerable institutions had already done their foundational work" (Grant 173). By 1300, "the most advanced ancient thought had already been discovered and translated," including algebra, geometry and arithmetic, and some natural philosophers had already begun to move beyond Aristotle into consideration of ideas about gravity, inertia, momentum and the mechanical or clockwork universe (Hannam 177).

Theologians and natural philosophers often attempted to combine the two subjects when discussing the origins of the universe or the proofs of God's existence. Even so, they "rarely allowed theology to hinder their inquiries into the physical world" (Grant 174). Among the most famous of these were Albertus Magnus, Roger Bacon, Robert Grossteste, John Pecham and Nicholas Oresme. William of Conches attempted to reconcile Christianity with Plato's natural philosophy, which he did by refuting the notion that the Bible should be interpreted literally. Like the other natural philosophers, he posited the concept of a physical universe created and set in motion by God that also followed certain predictable natural laws (Hannam 53). In this way, natural philosophy became the basis for modern science in the West, which in fact was still called natural philosophy until the 19th Century. In the exact science like astronomy and optics, medieval natural philosophy made few advances in its own right, but it did translate all the important ancient texts into Latin as a foundation for later scientists to build upon and surpass (Grant 192).

Christian natural philosophers at the end of the Middle Ages were involved in a search for the natural causes of events, rather than being content to rely on explanations of forces and processes that referenced supernatural intervention. For example, the fourteenth-century Catholic natural philosopher Nicole Oresme discussed natural wonders, saying, "there is no reason to take recourse to the heavens, the last refuge of the weak, or demons, or to our glorious God as if He would produce these effects directly, more so than those effects whose causes we believe are well-known to us" (Numbers 267).

The various waves of plague that swept through Europe affected the progress of knowledge. A third of Europe's population was wiped out in AD 1348, including many towns that were the repositories of scientific information and innovation. Coupled with the plague were destructive famines and numerous violent peasant uprisings, especially in Germany, that significantly distressed European society (Blickle). Given this sequence of events, it is little wonder that scientific development ground temporarily to a halt, not to be revived until the fifteenth-century, a period known as the Renaissance.

William of Occam formulated the principle of Occam's Razor, which held that the simplest theory that matched all the known facts was the correct one. At the University of Paris, Jean Buridan questioned the physics of Aristotle and presaged the modern scientific ideas of Isaac Newton and Galileo concerning gravity, inertia and momentum when he wrote:

...after leaving the arm of the thrower, the projectile would be moved by an impetus given to it by the thrower and would continue to be moved as long as the impetus remained stronger than the resistance, and would be of infinite duration were it not diminished and corrupted by a contrary force resisting it or by something inclining it to a contrary motion (Glick, Livesay and Wallis 107)

Thomas Bradwardine and his colleagues at Oxford University also anticipated Newton and Galileo when they found that a body moving with constant velocity travels distance and time equal to an accelerated body whose velocity is half the final speed of the accelerated body. Nicholas Oresme showed that the physics of Aristotle was not valid in its description of the movement of the earth and the atmosphere, and that the earth rotated daily and revolved around the sun. Despite this argument in favor of the Earth's motion Oresme, fell back on the commonly held opinion that "everyone maintains, and I think myself, that the heavens do move and not the earth. (Oresme 536-537).

The historian of science Ronald Numbers notes that the modern scientific assumption of methodological naturalism can be also traced back to the work of these medieval thinkers:

By the late Middle Ages the search for natural causes had come to typify the work of Christian natural philosophers. Although characteristically leaving the door open for the possibility of direct divine intervention, they frequently expressed contempt for soft-minded contemporaries who invoked miracles rather than searching for natural explanations. The University of Paris cleric Jean Buridan (a. 1295-ca. 1358), described as "perhaps the most brilliant arts master of the Middle Ages," contrasted the philosopher's search for "appropriate natural causes" with the common folk's erroneous habit of attributing unusual astronomical phenomena to the supernatural. In the fourteenth century the natural philosopher Nicole Oresme (ca. 1320 -- 82), who went on to become a Roman Catholic bishop, admonished that, in discussing various marvels of nature, "there is no reason to take recourse to the heavens, the last refuge of the weak, or demons, or to our glorious God as if He would produce these effects directly, more so than those effects whose causes we believe are well-known to us." (Numbers 267)

During the Late Middle Ages, however, Europe experienced famines, plagues, civil wars and rebellions that wiped out as much as 40-50% of the population and set in motion the forces of modernity that would destroy the feudal system and the universal power of the Catholic Church. These forces included national, capitalism, the Protestant Reformation, and the rise of humanism and modern science. All of these had their precursors in the Middle Ages, to be sure, and were built on medieval foundations, even though they also broke with and rebelled against them at the same time.

Economic Environment

Background

By the standards of the time and the limited development of technology, Europe was overpopulated in relation to its land base by the early-14th Century, when the weather turned wetter and colder with the beginning of the Little Ice Age. Starting in 1347, the bubonic plague killed at least half of the population. Plague and famine struck a population that was already poor and malnourished, and the plague recurred in the 1360s and in waves up until the 18th Century, while the Little Ice Age continued into the 1800s, all of which kept the population at relatively low levels. (Medieval Economics). Urban development in the absence of mechanization and industrialization was strictly limited to probably no more than 20% of the population. Heavy taxation and lack of arable land contributed to the poverty and misery of the peasants and serfs, and this hierarchical society was not particularly open to innovation (Medieval Economics).

Depopulation had major implications for the post-plague economy (Jordan). This created a shortage of agricultural workers with the survivors demanding higher wages, freedom from their feudal bondage and more representative government. In the Peasants Revolt of 1381 threatened to overthrow the feudal system and led to great reductions in taxes and rents during the next century (Jones 201). Not coincidentally, a new class of gentry, improving farmers and cloth merchants began to take shape in England, especially in London and the southwest, which become the most economically important region of the country (Barron 78). England became a more capitalist country than ever before as the feudal system went into decline, along with increased demands for more religious freedom and representation in Parliament from the lower classes that would become a common feature of social and political struggles in the centuries ahead. Trade, agriculture and population recovered only very slowly in the period 1400-1700, but in the process the entire society was reshaped into a more recognizably modern form.

Great Famine, Black Death and Peasant's Revolt

Overpopulation and climate change led to a Great Famine in 1315, which contributed to population decline (Aberth 13-14). Food prices and salt prices increased greatly due to the colder and wetter weather (Aberth 20; Jordon 38). Drought followed in the 1320s and then renewed colder and wetter weather that lasted for centuries (Jordan 17). The Black Death caused around 27% mortality for the upper classes and 40 -- 70% among the peasantry (Dyer 272-273). This reversed the population growth of the 12th and 13th centuries and left a domestic economy that was "profoundly shaken, but not destroyed" (Jordan 78; Hodgett 201). Because of famine and plague, the population fell by half in 1300-77, to only2.5 million, and numbers remained low into the 17th Century. (Medieval Economics).

Wages began to increase as well, even though the aristocracy attempted to keep these fixed at pre-Plague levels, which led to revolts (Medieval Economics). New poll taxes of 1377-1380 insisted that everyone should pay a sum equal to a craftsman's daily, which caused the people of the southeast rose in revolt in 1381. New sumptuary laws also banned the lower classes from consuming certain products or wearing high-status clothes, which had become more common as wages increased (Jones 16). (Medieval Economics). Serfdom gradually disappeared in England over the next 100 years because of this revolt, which was put down with great brutality. So were similar peasant revolts in the 15th Century in Yorkshire and Cornwall (McFarlane 143; Hodgett 204). Most new revenues were obtained through borrowing and taxes on trade rather than unpopular direct taxes (Jones 207).

Recovery

Agriculture and the overall economy remained depressed for centuries after the Black Death, although a new class of merchant capitalists, non-noble landed gentry, and bankers also came into being for the first time in the Late Middle Ages (Wood 120,173). With the population falling by half, more land was available for free peasants and gentry landlords, whose standard of living and consumption of meat also increased (Dyer 91). For the church and aristocracy, however, collections of rents and taxes also fell by half in the 14th and 15th Centuies (Hodgett 6). Land titles were increasingly farmed out for fixed rents or sold on the open market (Hodgett 205-206). Plague among the oxen also increased the numbers of horses used for plowing, which were more efficient (Aberth 27-28). Britain's fishing industry also expanded greatly during this time, in cities like Bristol (Bailey 53). Nobles also began buying more fish from commercial markets rather than using their own fishponds (Dyer 107). Tin and iron mining "expanded in the 14th and 15th Centuries, and the first blast furnace in England opened in 1496 in Newbridge" (Bailey 54-55).

Increasingly elaborate road networks were built across England, some involving the construction of up to thirty bridges to cross rivers and other obstacles (Hodgett 110). Shipbuilding, particularly in the southwest, became a major industry for the first time and investment in new trading ships became the single biggest form of late medieval investment in England (Kowalski 235). Trade fell slightly during the depression of the mid-15th century, but picked up again and reached 130,000 cloths a year by the 1540s (Lee 127). London controlled about 50% of these exports in 1400, and 83% of wool and cloth exports by 1540. New charted companies of merchant capitalists and entrepreneurs began to appear in London and other cities, such as the Worshipful Company of Drapers or the Company of Merchant Adventurers of London. English producers also "began to provide credit to European buyers rather than the other way around. Usury grew during the period, and few cases were prosecuted by the authorities" (Wood 173). Trade shifted into new directions, and the decline of "both the Baltic and the Gascon trade contributed to a sharp reduction in the consumption of furs and wine by the English gentry and nobility during the 15th Century" (Hatcher 266).

Manufacturing

By the 15th Century "pewter working in London was a large industry, with a hundred pewter workers recorded in London alone, and pewter working had also spread from the capital to eleven major cities across England" (Homer 68-73). Iron-working continued to expand and in 1509 the first cast-iron cannon was made in England. This was reflected "in the rapid growth in the number of iron-working guilds, from three in 1300 to fourteen by 1422" (Geddes 184). Many major landowners tended to focus their efforts on maintaining a "single major castle or house rather than the dozens a century before," but these were usually decorated in a more luxurious manner than previously. Major merchants' dwellings, too, were more lavish than in previous years, and the homes of the wealthy had more furnishings, chimneys and glass windows than in the past (Kermode 19-21). As English capitalism developed the numbers of foreign merchants declined as did the system of annual fairs (Meyer 161-164). These were still important even in the 15th century, however, especially for "exchanging money, regional commerce and in providing choice for individual consumers" (Ramsay xxiv).

4. General Management

Background

Leonardo Pisano and Thomas Aquinas were two key thinkers who influenced the Middle Ages greatly through the introduction of Arabic numerals, double-entry bookkeeping, and ideas about law, ethics and justice (Sangster, Stoner and McCarthy 1-2). Thomas Aquinas (1225 -- 1274) was an Italian Dominican priest and an important philosopher and theologian who founded the natural law and Scholastic tradition. His most important works were the Summa Theologica and the Summa Contra Gentiles. Aquinas argued that an unjust law that did not agree with the natural law of God should be disobeyed, and that tyrants who opposed natural law could be overthrown or assassinated. He restored "Natural Law to its independent state, asserting natural law as the rational creature's participation in the eternal law" (Gordon 100).

In Summa Theologica Aquinas developed the idea of a just price, which he thought was necessary in the burgeoning capitalist economy of the period. He asserted that natural law did not allow unjust dealings and unfair advantage, especially during famines and natural disasters. Aquinas believed that it was "immoral to raise prices because a particular buyer had an urgent need for what was being sold" and that "if someone would be greatly helped by something belonging to someone else, and the seller not similarly harmed by losing it, the seller must not sell for a higher price" (Summa Theologica - Price). Aquinas only allowed moderate gains, writing that "there is no reason why gain [from trading] may not be directed to some necessary or even honorable end; and so trading will be rendered lawful" (Summa Theologica - Price).

Management of Conflict

Just war theory goes back to ancient times, although Aquinas developed the most elaborate statement on this subject during the medieval era. His conditions for a just war included self-defense, being declared by a lawful ruler, and as a last resort after all other options had failed. It could not be fought for greed, revenge or pride, and must only inflict the minimal amount of death and destruction necessary to win, without injuring civilians if possible (Summa Theologica -- War).

Aquinas insisted that all human laws and institutions had to be based on natural law and that if positive laws were unjust that all Christians had a duty to disobey. An unjust law "retains merely the appearance of law insofar as it is duly constituted and enforced in the same way a just law is, but is itself a perversion of law." Moreover, Christians had a moral obligation to refuse obedience to tyrants when they ruled in opposition to morality and justice, which of course was commonplace in the Middle Ages (Burn 929-946).

Natural law theory was absolutely vital in the development of republican and democratic ideas during the Early Modern period, and was very influential for the Founders of the United States when they composed the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. (Edlin 345-368). In the formulation of modern notions of human rights, women's rights, individual liberties and abolition of slavery and serfdom, natural law paid in key role in the foundations of many new countries and the establishment of legislative and judicial institutions independent of monarchs (Reid 90-91). English common law rests on this tradition as well, and this is also expressed in the U.S. Constitution (Clinton).

Fibonacci

Leonardo Pisano (c. 1170 -- c. 1250) also known as Fibonacci, was an Italian mathematician, considered by some "the most talented western mathematician of the Middle Ages." (Fibonacci Series; Eves 261). He is responsible for introducing the Hindu-Arabic numeral system to Europe, in his Book of Calculation, the Liber Abaci; and for "a number sequence named after him which he did not discover but used as an example in the Liber Abaci" (Singh 28-30). wThe latter was only the third Western book to describe Arabic numerals, the first being the Codex Vigilanus completed in 976 and another by Pope Silvester II in 999 (Fibonacci Series). Liber Abaci means "The Book of Calculation," although it has also been translated as "The Book of the Abacus." Sigler (2002) finds that this is an error, since the "intent of the book was to describe methods of doing calculations without aid of an abacus" (Fibonacci Series). It also included proofs of "Euclidean geometry, and a study of simultaneous linear equations following Diophantus, which Fibonacci most likely learned from al-Karaji" (Fibonacci Series).

For the growing merchant-capitalist class in the towns, literacy, numeracy and double-entry bookkeeping became vital skills, and these features of the modern world first became prominent in Italy, where the Renaissance began in the 14th Century and was most advanced (Heeffer 11), The historical origin of the use of the "words 'debit' and 'credit' in accounting goes back to the days of single-entry bookkeeping in which the chief objective was to keep track of amounts owed by customers (debtors) and amounts owed to creditors. 'Debit,' is Latin for 'he owes' and 'credit' Latin for 'he trusts'" (Mills).