Az Eszterházy Károly Tanárképző Főiskola Tudományos Közleményei. 2004. Vol. 4. Eger Journal of English Studies. (Acta Academiae Paedagogicae Agriensis : Nova series ; Tom. 30)

MATTHEW PALMER The English Cathedral: Prom Description to Analysis

The English Cathedral: from Description to Analysis 75 one which will help in our understanding of the Middle Ages, the study of English cathedrals will not necessarily help us understand English culture in general across the ages unless one addresses the questions of historiography, ideology and language,

8 Language Although we have very few documents telling us how contemporaries saw their "Gothic" buildings, and those we have are in Latin, we do have Gervase's description of the rebuilding of the choir of Canterbury Cathedral following the catastrophic fire of 1174. It is a description in which Gervase tells us what he thinks are the significant differences between the old building and the new one: The pillars of the old and new work are alike in form and thickness but different in length. For the new pillars are elongated by almost twelve feet. In the old capitals the work was plain, in the new ones exquisite in sculpture. There the circuit of the choir had twenty-two pillars, here are twenty-eight. There the arches and everything else was plain, or sculpted with an axe and not with a chisel. But here almost throughout is appropriate sculpture. No marble columns were there, but here are innumerable ones. There, in the circuit around the choir, the vaults were plain, but here they are arch-ribbed and have keystones. There a wall set upon the pillars divided the crosses from the choir, but here the crosses are separated from the choir by no such partition, and converge together in one keystone, which is placed in the middle cf the great vault which rests on the four principal pillars. There, there was a ceiling of wood decorated with excellent painting, but here there is a vault beautifully constructed of stone and light tufa. There, was a single triforium, but here are two in the choir and a third in the aisle of the church of the church. All which will be better understood from inspection than by any description.

9 Thus, it is that Gervase compares the Romanesque (or Norman) and Gothic styles, centuries before the terms were coined. The vocabulary used by contemporary art historians has a history of its own, with terms like "Norman", "Early English"

, "Decorated" and "Perpendicular" having their own histories, some longer than others.

1

0 o Abkarovits concludes by saying: "This is why studying English Gothic cathedral architecture is an indispensible element in our understanding English culture" (op. cit. p. 64). 1

0 The terms Norman, Early English and Decorated were coined by Thomas Rickman