Romanesque & Gothic Architectural Styles
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Romanesque and Gothic, the great architectural styles of the Middle Ages, evolved in the context of church architecture. Out of the desire to create grander and more beautiful structures that spoke of the glory of God, the resources and skills of the age were heavily devoted to the design and building of these churches. The Romanesque style drew on many sources and reflected enormous advances in building technique. Stone vaulted ceilings, narrower piers, increased width of the naves, and new arrangements of interior space characterized the Romanesque effort. When these technological strands had come together the Gothic manner improved on them. Earlier advances in vaulting were used by the Gothic architects to create thinner piers and lighter walls that could be fitted with numerous windows, thereby producing a wholly new type of interior. Each style had its own theological rationale but the elaborate sculpture and decoration of the Romanesque and the glowing stained glass of the Gothic, along with the grandeur of both styles, were widely understood as earthbound reflections of heavenly glory. Though many elements contributed to the Romanesque, the term generally refers to the architectural style that first coalesced in the churches established by the monastic orders along the lucrative pilgrimage routes of France and northern Spain. The internationalism that resulted from these pilgrimages brought together elements from many places and then spread the style far and
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t Tours, St. Martial at Limoges, Ste. Foi at Conques and St. Sernin at Toulouse), had very similar forms. The pilgrimage church featured a long nave, with aisles and a gallery, as well as a wide transept and an expanded sanctuary arm. Tunnel vaulting, "carried to a uniform height" in all the arms of the cruciform church, typically featured transverse arches and was sustained on "square piers with four attached shafts, one of which rises up the face of the nave wall to carry the transverse arch." At the ground floor level two of the other shafts carried their half of the nave arches, while the fourth shaft merged into the support of the groin-vaulted side aisles. This arrangement of side aisles reflect two practical demands. One is the change in interior space required by the influx of pilgrims. The wide aisles and the ambulatory with radiating chapels, "with the inner wall of the ambulatory open to enable the pilgrims to see into the sanctuary," allowed them to pass around the interior, visiting the shrines, without disturbing the celebrations at the high altar. The broad galleries could also be used to increase the room for the congregations on special days.
But these changes also had a structural function. Though the
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Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 2593
Approximate Pages = 10 (250 words per page)
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