Medieval Architecture, Medieval Learning : Builders and Masters in the Age of Romanesque and Gothic

The 11th and 12th centuries witnessed a transformation of European culture, from architecture and the visual arts to history, philosophy, theology and even law. In this book, the authors offer fresh perspectives on changes in architecture and learning at three moments in time. They compare not only buildings and treatises but also argue that the ways of thinking and of solving problems were analogous. The authors trace the professional contexts and creative activities of builders and masters from the creation of the Romanesque to the achievements of the Gothic and, in the process, establish new criteria for defining each. During the 11th and 12th centuries, they argue, both intellectual treatises and Romanesque architecture reveal both a growing mastery of a body of relevant expertise and the expanding techniques by which that knowledge could be applied to problems of reasoning and building. In the 12th century, new intellectual directions, set by such specialists as Peter Abelard and the second master builder working at Saint-Denis, began to construct new systems of thinkng based on a coherent view of the world. By the 13th century these became the standards by which all practitioners of a discipline were measured.