For nearly four hundred years Gothic style dominated the architecture of It originated in northern France in the twelfth century, andspread rapidly across England and the Continent, invading the old Viking empireof Scandinavia. It confronted the Byzantine provinces of Central Europe andeven made appearances in the near East and the Americas. Gothic architectsdesigned town halls, royal palaces, courthouses, and hospitals. They fortifiedcities and castles to defend lands against invasion. But it was in the serviceof the church, the most prolific builder of the Middle Ages, that the Gothicstyle got its most meaningful expression, providing the widest scope for thedevelopment of architectural ideas.1Although by 1400 Gothic had become the universal style of building inthe Western world, its creative heartland was in northern France in an areastretching from the royal domain around Paris, including Saint-Denis andChartres, to the region of the Champagne in the east and southward to Bourges.Within this restricted area, in the series of cathedrals built in the course ofthe 12th and 13th centuries, the major innovations of Gothic architecture tookplace.2The supernatural character of medieval religious architecture was givena special form in the Gothic church. "Medieval man considered himself but animperfect refraction of Divine Light of God, Whose Temple stood on earth,according to the text of the dedication ritual, stood for the Heavenly City ofJerusalem."3 The Gothic interpretation of this point of view was a cathedral sogrand that seems to belittle the man who enters it, for space, light, structureand the plastic effects of the stonework are made to produce a visionary scale.The result of the Gothic style is distortion as there is no fixed set ofproportions in the parts. Such architecture did not only express the physicaland spiritual needs of the Church, but also the general attitude of the peopleof that time. Gothic was not dark,...
