Some Christian Churches

Every Christian church that has ever been built - and this is arguably true of the places of worship of every faith - is an amalgam of the pragmatic and the idealistic, of earthly concerns and divine ones. Each church lies in the borderlands defined on one side by the gravity-bound weight of stone and on the other by the desire of humans to reach into the heavens, into the realm of sky and cloud where so many societies have believed that their gods live. The three churches that will be discussed in this paper are no exception: St. Sebald Church, in Nuremburg, Germany; the Florence Cathedral, and the Cathedral of Milan, each balance the physical forces required to build looming buildings of stone and glass with the desire of architects, builders, and patrons to create works that would simultaneously demonstrate their own piety and impeccable taste. Taken together, these three churches also allow us to understand the ways in which that combination of the divine and the quotidian changed over time from the Romanesque to the Gothic in all of its forms and then into the architectural gems of the Renaissance.

This shift in styles can not only be seen if we consider these churches in relationship to each other but also if we consider them in relationship to themselves, for each of the churches includes elements from different moments in history. In the case of the cathedral in Florence this was primarily the case because the building took well over a century to construct, and the y

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the Romanesque building (while arguably just as beautiful as anything that would come after them) were constructed as they were not simply for 'sthetic reasons but because they were the best method that masons of the Middle Ages knew to use. The introduction of the arch brisee - that "broken arch" that is emblematic of the Gothic Church - allowed builders to create substantially taller buildings with far more glass in them. This combination of larger walls pierced by expanses of glass defined the Gothic cathedral as a place of light and also, arguably, of ambition. The Gothic cathedral was certainly still a place of reverence, a place in which individuals would feel themselves humbled before God. But it was also a place in which people would be impressed by the power of human ingenuity as well. People who could construct such buildings would also begin to construct ships to sail around the world - and would begin to move towards the age of the machine. The Romanesque choir in this church is a place to inspire far more humble dreams and belongs - both in technological and what we might call epistemological terms - to a world in which people's horizons were far narrower. The nave and choir of the Cathedral of Florence are much mor

Category: Philosophy - S