The huge progress made in architecture during the Gothic period is absolutely amazing. The flying buttress saves some of the most beautiful buildings in the world funny how such a small and elegant looking structure can hold the very walls in place. The disaster that brought their use into being brought the world some of the most lacy walls and beautiful glass windows in existence together to create a house of God.
Now stories could be told in light which embodied God in spirit. The door embodying Jesus and the pillars the heads of the church. All of this beauty and guilt in one place. People spent their entire lives building churches and not just for the pay on earth but for the favor they would curry in heaven. The message was if you follow the teaching of the priests and obeyed your rulers God will smile upon you and you would be guaranteed a place in heaven. But then one could buy their way there too.
For a time period when people were uneducated the pictures were written words. The spelled out the rules and the punishments for failure to follow those rules. The described the trials and tribulations of the bibical characters. Sent to heaven for living the pias life or tormented by demons for all eternity.
What the church did for art is unbelievable and if you can't dispute that art is much further along for the sake of explain who we are and from where we come.
But it is the architectural that speaks volumes and its decoration that stuns the viewer. It is important to think of more than popular conceptions of Gothic history and understand that people would give their lives to a building that leaves us so in awe.
