"STONE AGE ENGINEERING"

New Zealand Listener, Volume 11, Issue 272, 8 September 1944, Unnumbered Page

"STONE

AGE ENGINEERING"

War

Among The Cathedrals

Written for "The Listener"

by

A.M.

R.

| cari task of war comment columns, eagerly following the rush of Allied armies around Paris, can scarcely have missed noticing how several small centres mentioned have been credited with "one of the finest cathedrals in Europe." Remembering fhotos of famous cathedrals in places as far distant from Northern France as Cologne, Vienna and Milan (not to mention St. Basil’s, Moscow, or Sancta Sophia, Istanbul!) they probably suspect the war commentators of uncritical cribbing from boostful local guide-books, However, our contributor, A.M.R., writing from personal knowledge of several cathedrals, gives reasons for saying that "finest in the world" may really apply to those in Northern France. He tells also how these Gothic cathedrals came to be built and why both sides normally go out of their way to preserve them in the thick of the fighting. E have in Wellington a businessman who, when he lived in Europe, used to go on pilgrimage to Chartres Cathedral. "It is," he says, "the finest building in the world," and he narrates, with strong approval, how one acquaintance abandoned his profession and country to spend the rest of his life in the building as.a cleaner or doorkeeper. This cult of cathedrals sounds to some of us "sublime. mysticism and nonsense." Nevertheless many hard-headed writers rate cathedral contemplation highly, and practically all who do so claim pre-eminence for Chartres or some other in the recent battle area around Paris. Joad is one. Eric Gill, another, says downrightly that he "cannot see how anyone can say that Chartres Cathedral is not the most perfectly proportioned stone building in the world, the holiest work of masonry." And when you ask him how can he know, since he has not seen every building in the world, he replies that, "only iri Northern Europe was the business of building in stone rationally approached, and not much travelling is necessary to see that the choice (of best) is restricted to a very small number of buildings in a small part of Northern France." "A Joy and an Adventure" These churches are. of course Gothic. The Gothic style, a mystery to. most of us, grew in historical fact of nothing more unusual than attem to make, with local stone, better-lighted and more gracefully proportioned churches. Its distinctive discovery was that vaulted roofs can be made (by "groins") to stand on a few pillars instead of resting on solid walls. This in turn made it possible to put windows where the walls had been, or else to place the walls some distance outside the pillars and use them not merely for keeping out the weather but to help in holding up the roof through buttresses "flying" high in the air between outside walls and inside pillars. These discoveries so amazingly extended man’s command over stone that the age becamé jntoxicated with them. Building became a joy and an adventure. The people of Amiens narrowed their pillars to mere slim rods of stone and yet held a roof at 140 feet-no wood, mind you, no steel, no concrete, just stone on stone. Beauvais nearby attempted 154 feet and only after two collapses agreed to double the number

of pillars. Sainte Chapelle in Paris made its apse almost entirely of glass. The efithusiasm, ability, and capital of the period went into stone just as those of ours, following equivalent revolutionary discoveries, have gone into metal. The only essential difference in the two situations, indeed, is that their dominant emotion was joy and gratitude for the new skills and possibilities, so that they made non-dividend-returning churches. Sermons in Stone If sheer joy in making accounts for the great bulk, virtuostic- exuberance, and religious use of the first Gothic buildings, their stained windows and riotous mantle of sculptures and reliefs were added as sermons for the illiterate. As you first stand before the main doorway of Amiens (for instance) it seems recessed in a jungle of saints and monsters. But observe more closely and sympathetically. Above the central figure of Christ are flowers and plants. Each represents a power or a virtue that He possesses. Still higher stand strange beasts. Each signifies some evil principle in nature, But their position indicates that they too are employed by the God who is over all to work out His purposes in spite of themselves. Under Christ’s feet are lion and dragon-human egotism and brutishness. Prophets, local and world rulers, apostles and district saints, ranged alongside Him, each in his position of significance, are likewise related to each other and to various emblems. Every door, every niche, every ceiling of a medieval cathedral was a cycle of sermons in itself. Extending the Witadear space: at first reduced the wall area to be painted on. Then in Le Mans, about the time that William the Conqueror was leaving nearby Falaise for England, they began making the window pictures. Glass was

then worth its weight in silver. Even castles had still only "wind-holes." Moreover glass could be made only in small fragments. But ways were found of burning metal tinctures into them and of binding them with lead’ into sermons in colour. The significance of the pictures on these miscalled "painted" wine dows is lost upon tourists to-day. But they appreciate the interiors swimming in a translucence like that of underwater sunlight. Spread Over Europe As news of these "mysteries" (i.e., crafts) in the Isle of France was carried by gaping travellers throughout Europe, would be apprentices pilgrimaged thither. As they dispersed again England also began building Gothic churches — never so sheerly impressive as those of Northern France, but more charming in their unexpected nooks and _ greater decoration. Germans next began specialising in lightness and delicacy, with results of. daring slimness in Ulm and Strasburg that are literally breathtaking. The Stephansdom in Vienna worked the Hungarian colours into its roof. _ The Guild of Masons travelling from job to job or discovery to discovery evolyed an elaborate system of secret signs whereby they might not only be recognised and helped by fellow craftsmen anywhere in Christendom but also be accorded their precise importance’ in the hierarchy of skill. The signs and mutual aid remain to-day. The skills have vanished. Our age has other, and easier, materials to build with. It also has another outlook and different interests. We can complete, as in Cologne, those medieval cathedrals which-the great majority-are still unfinished after 600 years. But no one will or can ever build another. That is why even armies care so meticulously for them.