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Summary: Out of anonymity
Comment: While I've read many books on Romanesque and Gothic architecture, and have visited Chartres, I've always been frustrated by the lack of information available about the actual people who created the monuments. What a pleasure to finally find a book that focuses both on the intellectual movements that fueled the Gothic age, and the clergy and builders who were instrumental in the creative process.
While the book is excellent and well-written, I refrained from giving it five stars only because I think a reader would benefit from additional sources highlighting architectural details and comparisons with other cathedrals.
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Summary: Ultimately Disappointing
Comment: The author sets the bar high: a book that describes the design and building of the cathedral at Chartres while putting it into the context of medieval philosophy, theology, technology, science, politics and economy. In theory a laudable goal, but in practice a muddle. This reader was alternately bogged down in overly-long and involved chapters discussing the differences between scholastic Platonists and Aristotelians and disappointed that there wasn't more about the cathedral itself. Ball is a journalist who has obviously done his homework -- there's an extensive, multi-page bibliography and he quotes from dozens of experts -- but in the end this feels like a well-written overview of other people's writings on the subject, rather than an original look by a writer with any strong convictions himself. About halfway through this book I had the nagging thought I would have done better by re-reading Thomas Cahill's lively "Mysteries of the Middle Ages" and my nephew's illustrated copy of David Macaulay's "Cathedral." There's no shortage of wonderful books on Chartres and the building of the cathedrals and the curious reader should consider them seriously before investing in this book.
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Summary: Outstanding New Book on Chartres Cathedral
Comment: Why would someone write a biography of a BUILDING? Well, if you've ever been to Chartres Cathedral about 45 miles south-west of Paris, you'd know why. Chartres continues to provoke us with its emotive power, and its place in the history of Gothic architecture is firmly secured at "page 1" in our texts. That's why it was so exciting when we found out that there was a new treatment of Chartres being released this summer, and many reviewers, including those at The Economist and The Financial Times, took time to present the book to their reading audiences worldwide.
Ball's treatise on Chartres is a truly wonderful additional to the evolving library of Gothic. As a person who is familiar with the literature, I can easily say that his work here will make possible the introduction of this topic to an entirely new generation of people who are captivated by this most evocative of art forms. Ball has done what can be classified as nothing less than a superb job of collating, digesting, and then restating in clear, meaningful words the voluminous amount of material that is available on the subject. And this is no small task: the topic is the subject of attention of everyone from mechanical engineers, masonry experts, art historians, medieval historians, and even education historians. Most of these works are undeniably fascinating and tremendously enjoyable to read. But you will find yourself having to put on your "engineer's hat" to read Heyman's The Stone Skeleton: Structural Engineering of Masonry Architecture, then put on your "art historian's hat" to read Coldstream's Medieval Architecture (Oxford History of Art), and your "photographer's hat" to read Schultz's Great Cathedrals. There are dozens and dozens more books still on the open market just like these, and they all play an important role in helping us further understanding this fascinating topic. But Ball's book deftly summarizes and explicates many of the major themes of this content, and allows us to absorb it all in one text. I must confess that the book exceeded any expectations I had, and I am thoroughly impressed.
Ball's book covers far more than the physical elements of Chartres cathedral. We peer into the world of medieval scholasticism and Platonic thought in the cathedral schools of the 12th century to investigate what role, if any, such thought had on the development of the Gothic style. We read about Chartres' predecessor building, St. Denis basilica, just north of Paris, and the impact Suger had on this form there, and consider the potential linkages between these structures. We also take a quick course on medieval construction techniques, and listen to some of the hypotheses which engineering architects have devised to explain how such buildings could be constructed without electricity or power tools. We see how stained glass was manufactured, why the blue windows of Chartres are so unusual, and even hypothesize that "Chartres blue" may have been imported from other glass foundries outside of France. We also review the varying theories of the sequence of Chartres' construction that may explain its physical irregularities (for example, was the building constructed from east-to-west, or from west-to-east, and why are there "mismatches" between sections of the structure?).
There is much, much more. But all along the way, we are provided a wonderful, comprehensive introduction to the times, history, and settings of that "vulgar style called 'Gothic,'" which is regarded as one of the pinnacles of architectural and artistic achievement. If you are a Gothic enthusiast, get this book to enjoy and savor, the first new book on the subject in some time. But also buy a copy for a friend. There is probably no better way to introduce Chartres cathedral and Gothic architecture to a new generation of enthusiasts.
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Summary: Exploring the Philosophical Foundations of Gothic Architecture
Comment: Philip Ball's "Universe of Stone: A Biograpahy of Chartres Cathedral" seeks to explore and explain the philosophical roots of a society and culture that produced Chartres Cathedral, an archtypical masterpiece of Gothic architecture. Balls himself admits the hurdles he faced: "Arguably, then, it is a foolhardy eneavour to say anything about 'why' Chartres Cathedral was built, which in the end what this book attempts to do. But to my mind, it is only by confronting that question that we can fully experience what this most extraordinary, most inspiring building has to offer."
Ball is inevitably limited in his efforts by the lack of extensive detailed records from that distant era, as well as by the profound differences in our perceptions of the world than those held by people of the 11th and 12th centuries.
The first half of "Universe of Stone" is especially challenging to the reader as the author lays out the background to the medieval mind: Aristotle and Plato and Augustine and Bernard of Clairvaux and Peter Abelard and the rise of Neo-Platonist philosophy with its emphasis on rational order. The pace of the book's narrative picks up when practical matters of design and finance and construction are considered, with the author citing records of numerous other Gothic building projects to explain what must have happened at Chartres. Along the way, Ball addresses and discards many popular myths, such as the design of the Cathedral incorporating mystical knowledge and that cathedral-building was a manifestation of popular civic enthusiasm.
The attentive reader of "Universe of Stone" will be rewarded with a better understanding of the medieval mind as well as the practical realities of constructing such marvelous buildings.
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Summary: Trying to Understand a Medieval Masterpiece
Comment: The Crusade of European Christians to overtake Jerusalem and Constantinople is famous. There was another crusade at the time, though, a "cathedral crusade" between the mid eleventh and fourteenth centuries. In France alone over eighty cathedrals were built, not to mention large and small churches. Arguably the greatest of all the cathedrals is the one at Chartres, beneath the vaults of which, according to Napoleon, even the atheist would feel uneasy. To examine just how Chartres works and how it can impress anyone with a sense of reverential awe is the purpose of _Universe of Stone: A Biography of Chartres Cathedral_ (Harper) by Philip Ball. Ball, who has written about diverse subjects like Renaissance medicine, water, and the history of pigment making, says that understanding Chartres is made difficult by all the centuries that have laid on since its construction and all the different academic and philosophical views that have often made confusing issues even less clear. Ball writes, "It is only by embedding the church in the culture of the twelfth century - its philosophies, its schools and its politics, its trades and technologies, its religious debates - that we can begin to make sense of what we see (and what we feel) when we pass through the Royal Portal of the west front." His book accomplishes this goal, clearly laying out spiritual, social, and technological trends of the era in a thoughtful and entertainingly discursive book of architectural history.
There is much we do not know about how the cathedral was built. We do know that it was built quickly, in the first 26 years of the thirteenth century. We don't know the architect who planned it all out, or if an architect actually did so, nor how educated the planners and builders were. There are no plans or models. We do know that it represented a change from Romanesque to Gothic architecture. Romanesque builders piled stones for the chief purpose of having them not fall down, and their resulting vast walls and narrow windows were a reflection of darkness and monastic seclusion. Chartres was in the vanguard of Gothic construction, changing the way the church regarded itself. It is not likely that the builders had in mind a celebration of the light of reason, but it is not far-fetched to imagine that the increase of light and banishment of the old gloom both reflected and inspired a process from fearing God to investigating with wonder God's works. Most of the hundreds of stone carvings in Chartres were done by masons who knew the stones would then be hoisted to a high nook where human eyes could never again see them. Only upon the invention of powerful spyglasses, tools the masons could never have imagined, were these sculptures seen again. The erection of the cathedral was not always so idealistic, however. Ball makes clear that those who worked on it expected to get paid, and that the those who got paid did not like the idea of volunteers doing the work for free in religious ecstasy. There is a legend of the "cult of the carts", whereby spontaneous fervor caused laymen to harness themselves to bring stones from far away, but much more likely is that any such show was organized by the clerics. Certainly, surviving accounts show that all unskilled manual work went for a fee, despite any bouts of fervent free labor.
Ball writes that Chartres is "nearly a pristine document, miraculously preserved from a distant world, bearing a message that is barely diluted." There has been a bit of remodeling and a huge baroque sculpture of the Assumption in the choir, and it is alarming that what Ball calls "the arrogance of eighteenth-century artistic chauvinism" permitted the interior to be completely whitewashed. The building never did get finished according to original intentions, because it got only two spires rather than the nine that were proposed, but it still has a unity and a clarity that few structures of the time can claim. It was also a showpiece for the era's understanding of flying buttresses, pointed arches, and ribbed vaulting, all of which are pictured and diagrammed here, along with illustrations of what might go wrong if stresses on the structures were not in balance. If you can't get there to see the cathedral itself, Ball's book is the perfect vehicle for informed armchair traveling.
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