Architecture as a Medium to Study the Middle Ages: An Analysis

Introduction

Architecture is the crystallization of ideas. Architecture has been defined many ways—as shelter in the form of art, as a blossoming in stone and a flowering of geometry (Ralph Waldo Emerson), as frozen music (Johann Wolfgang von Goethe), man's triumph over gravitation and his will to power (Friedrich Nietzsche), the will of an epoch translated into space (architect Mies van der Rohe), the magnificent play of forms in light (architect Le Corbusier), a cultural instrument (architect Louis I. Kahn), or inhabited sculpture (sculptor Constantin Brancusi). The architectural critic Ada Louise Huxtable framed a rather clinical definition, saying architecture is a "balance of structural science and aesthetic expression for the satisfaction of needs far beyond the utilitarian" (Jeremy, pp. 56-67). Most people in the early twenty-first century—users, that is, as opposed to designers and critics—seldom think of architecture as anything more than a mute utilitarian container. Yet architecture is a form of nonverbal communication, as was recognized by many builders in centuries past. Architecture speaks volumes about the values and priorities of the designer or architect, and of those who built it.

Discussion

Architecture is the crystallization of ideas. Architecture has been defined many ways—as shelter in the form of art, as a blossoming in stone and a flowering of geometry (Ralph Waldo Emerson), as frozen music (Johann Wolfgang von Goethe), man's triumph over gravitation and his will to power (Friedrich Nietzsche), the will of an epoch translated into space (architect Mies van der Rohe), the magnificent play of forms in light (architect Le Corbusier), a cultural instrument (architect Louis I. Kahn), or inhabited sculpture (sculptor Constantin Brancusi). The architectural critic Ada Louise Huxtable framed a rather clinical definition, saying architecture is a "balance of structural science and aesthetic expression for the satisfaction of needs far beyond the utilitarian" (Jeremy, pp. 56-67). Most people in the early twenty-first century—users, that is, as opposed to designers and critics—seldom think of architecture as anything more than a mute utilitarian container. Yet architecture is a form of nonverbal communication, as was recognized by many builders in centuries past. Architecture speaks volumes about the values and priorities of the designer or architect, and of those who built it.

Even around 175 C.E., as Marcus Aurelius was writing his Meditations, Christianity was spreading across the empire. Of the various cults and religions that vied for converts during the early years of what has come to be called the common era, Christianity was the most persuasive for several reasons. Unlike the impersonal state religion of Rome, with its removed and de-personalized rituals to placate Jupiter and the deified emperors, Christianity offered direct communication with a personalized deity, embodied in the crucified Christ (Girouard, pp. 78-88). The present world, with all of its shortcomings and disappointments, was seen as only the preparation ground for a subsequent eternal life. The classical focus on the practicalities of the here and now faded in importance. In the West, the old Roman Empire was transformed, through ...