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Climate Change and Medieval Sacred Architecture

Climate Change and Medieval Sacred Architecture

By Chris Simmons

BSc Honors Thesis, Western Illinois University, 2006

Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris - photo by Giorgos Vintzileos / Flickr
Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris – photo by Giorgos Vintzileos / Flickr

Abstract: Shelter, as a means of providing an environment protected from the elements, has always been a function of climate for traditional and premodern cultures. This study attempts to explore the influence of climate and climate change on historical European shelters, and particularly Medieval sacred architecture (which perhaps provides the best, most intact, and most elaborate examples of constructions made during this period in history). In particular, building elements and styles between the Medieval Warm Period (1000-1200), during which much of Europe possessed a dry, sunny Mediterranean-like climate, and the Little Ice Age, which was characterized by below normal temperatures and rainier conditions over Northern Europe were analyzed. First, this study identifies the most dramatic architectural change of the high Middle Ages—that from Romanesque to Gothic between 1150 and 1200 A.D. The Romanesque style, with its small windows, low inclination roofs, and Classical Mediterranean design, was more suitable to the dry, warm Mediterranean climates. Romanesque remained popular well into the Thirteenth and Fourteenth centuries in southern and western France and Italy, long after the invention of the Gothic style, largely due to the Romanesque’s regional climactic suitability to the Mediterranean.

However, as rain, snow, cloudier weather, and colder temperatures became more prevalent in the north, architects were compelled to design churches and cathedrals that would provide more interior lighting (larger windows) and better roofing. The Gothic style, with its pointed spires, high inclination roofs, large, symmetric windows, and efficient drainage system in the form of gargoyles, was more suitable the Little Ice Age climate of Northern Europe. When the Gothic style was used in Mediterranean countries it often took on vastly different qualities, and many of these southern Gothic churches were similar to the Romanesque and Early Gothic designs from the Medieval Warm Period.

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In addition to linking international architectural style changes in Medieval Europe to climactic patterns, this study tracks the regional shifts in architectural styles still visible today, such as the differences between Gothic windows in France versus Gothic windows in Italy, as well as style changes over time (such as the expansion of window size and reduction of deepcolor stain glass usage from the high to late Medieval eras in northern Europe, as well as the slow progression of gargoyles from northern to southern France at the onset of the Little Ice Age). In addition, this research seeks to identify ways in which some of these style changes can be seen as indicative of the location of the jet stream as it moved from a mean position over central Scandinavia during the Medieval Warm Period to a new location over Northern Europe (which provided these regions with colder and rainier weather).

Click here to read this thesis from McGill University

See also: Fiat lux: climatic considerations in medieval stained glass aesthetics

See also: Interior Lighting Database for Medieval Sacred Structures

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