Gothic Architecture

The history of Gothic architecture shows that this aesthetic or, more narrowly, stylistic function of the hall-church was only gradually recognized, and that the preservation of the basilican form led to the creation of certain specifically Gothic forms, especially the flying buttress. The architects of Late Gothic hall-churches were ready to deny themselves flying buttresses because by then the style had infused every architectural member with new life. The Early Gothic hall-church at Poitiers is a conservative first attempt to achieve Gothic partiality in this spatial type.

The cathedral at Soissons is a High Gothic unity, except for the south transept and the chapel which was added diagonally to it. A comparison between this south transept, an imaginative masterpiece of Early Gothic architecture, built about 1180, and the remainder of the cathedral is most illuminating, since it shows that the new generation of about 1200 rejected the charm of complexity in favour of an emphasis on necessity and severity. The architect tried to connect the group of shafts above each pier with the pier itself by adding a single shaft below, but this was not wide enough to form a logical sequence with the three shafts above.

Although the system and nearly all the details of Strassburg are French, this cathedral is always described as specifically German. This is probably a result of Goethe's famous and thrilling eulogy of it: however, he spoke only of the facade, and was not yet acquainted with the development of French Gothic architecture. The factor which is still described as specifically German is the choice of the proportions. The nave at Strassburg is about 53 1/2 feet wide and 105 feet high, but these proportions were dictated by those of the transepts, which had already been completed, and by the width of the Romanesque nave which the present one replaced.

In Germany , the boundary between High Gothic and Late Gothic is not as clear as it is in England . Most German architects continued to build plain cross-vaults. There was an increasing preference for hall-churches and an increasing reluctance to build transepts and crossings. This clearly reflects a growing dislike of the multitude of re-entrant angles in High Gothic architecture. The basic principles of the Gothic style demanded that the interior spatial parts should be bounded externally by a continuous contour without any projections sideways or upwards. This new type was more fully developed in Germany than in other national schools of the Late Gothic style.

A few years later, in the chapels of the Frauenkirche at Ingolstadt , which was built between 1509 and 1524, Erhard Heydenreich created a series of variants of the form used at Frankfurt . Here, the proper vaults form the primary surface, with the secondary, flying network hanging below them, and they show once again that one must learn to read Gothic architecture from its furthest surface to its nearest one, or, in this case, from the uppermost surface downwards. These ribs can only be considered as 'useless', that is serving no practical purpose, but they do emphatically fulfill an aesthetic or a stylistic function. The question as to whether or not ribs actually carry weight has no meaning here, for the rib has become an autonomous form, present purely for its own sake. Some of the ribs at Ingolstadt even have the form of tree-trunks with their branches cut off.

The sceptics, who appeared about 1900, did not perceive the metaphorical driving belt which must be assumed to run between Gothic civilization and Gothic architecture, if one is to accept an explanation of stylistic developments in terms of the many factors which go to make a civilization. It was, of course, obvious that certain architectural traits must be a reflection of the civilization of their time, but it was not known whether these traits should be interpreted as reflections either of social factors or of national ones, or whether perhaps they sprang from a change in the nature of piety.