November 18, 2003

Christian Architecture

           In his attempt to define Gothic architecture, Ruskin acknowledges that “every building of the Gothic period differs in some important respect from every other” (500) so that all characters, considered in union, can be determined to a greater or lesser degree of Gothicness.  The greater the combination of Gothic characters, the more gothic the building is.  According to Ruskin, the mental or moral objectives of Gothic are savageness, changefulness, naturalism, grotesqueness, rigidity, and redundancy.  Ruskin appears to heavily base his opinions upon the origin of Gothic architecture by paying particular attention to the Goths (Englishmen, Frenchmen, Dane or German) who coined the word “Gothic” and to the climate of the North of the Alps.  Art reflects the history of its time. 

On savageness, Ruskin surmises that the first impression of Gothic architecture was “a degree of sternness and rudeness” that “express[ed] the barbaric character of the nations among whom that architecture arose” (504).  The art and architecture of the time tells of that time period and of the people.  Ruskin goes on to set up the difference between the South and the North.  While the warm South bathed in a “great peacefulness of light…laid like pieces of a golden pavement in to the sea-blue, chased,” (505) the harsh North’s farthest borders glow a “gloomy purple” (506).  It is the harshness of the North climate that furthered the perception of the rude and wild North in subsequent Gothic art. 

On changefulness, Ruskin argues that architecture, in general, “works on known rules, and from given models, it is not an art, but a manufacture” (510).  However, architecture must live by the rules of arithmetic; otherwise, it would not be able to serve its double function as ornamental art and as shelter.  Much of the asymmetry was exacted because of the Gothic obsession of function coupled within a form; variety comes from necessity.  Therefore, it is hard to find towers of the same height or with the same positions for windows.  Ruskin summarizes “[Gothic builders] never suffered ideas of outside symmetries and consistencies to interfere with the real use and value of what they did” (511). 

Because of our love for nature and for truthfulness, “we find all men of true feeling delighting to escape out of modern cities into natural scenery” (510).  Men derive no pleasure from monotony, so we search outside of the “box” for inspiration through the ever changing foliage like the “strange cup-like buds or clusters” (513).  As we attempt to mimic this beauty and truth of nature, the Gothic architecture arises in accord with Christian humility.  Christianity’s optimistic outlook states all is to work for the good; the architect does not seek “to disguise his own roughness of work, nor his subject’s roughness of make” (514).  It is standard of Gothic architecture to suggest imperfection through roughness.

According to Ruskin the rigidity of Gothic architecture attempts to convey the Northern workman habit of “hard and rapid working…quickened by the coldness of the climate” (517).  The sharp energy is trapped within the arches as if to embody the “strength of will, independence of character [and] resolute of purpose” (518) of the Goth.