With the rise of King Charlemagne to power, a modicum of order returns to Europe. Now, certainly we're not back in the Roman Empire, but there is organization, at least a country, a king, a system. People begin being able to settle down and trust a little bit more that there will be some sort of survival, that there is a tomorrow to follow today. Part of the reason they're able to do that is because the system that they've been living under begins to be more set, more codified.
As we turn the corner into the high middle ages, feudalism is not only an option, it becomes a societal organization in a real set way. Now, the structure of feudalism doesn't really change here. You still have the majority of Europe are farmers, peasants. Above them, you have the knights, the protectors. Above them, you have the church and the nobility, your managers or organizers.
And then at the top, you have the king. The king, of course, claims that his authority comes from God as validated or certified by the pope. That authority, the remainder of what is left in the organization from when Rome fell.
The church, again, provides that central social framework for life. Now, in this feudal system, in the early medieval period, when this is just getting started, before there's really names and organization to it, people could move fairly freely in the feudal system. If you were big, you were strong, you could get yourself weapons, a horse, congratulations!
Perhaps you could be a knight, a protector. As the high Middle Ages come in, however, people are more locked into the system. They become hereditary. In other words, if your parents were nobility, you're going to be nobility. There's good and bad to this.
The good is that everyone knows their place. There is a sense of stability and security. The bad part, of course, is that people are locked in place. It's also bad because there is an incredible...
possibility for abuse. I mean, when you're looking at a system like this, an organizational system that's like protection-based, land-based, and protection-based, every layer is more powerful than the one below it, and therefore every layer potentially can abuse that power. One of the places where the risk was the greatest was actually with the Knights, simply because the Knights could abuse their power on the levels both above and below them. Certainly a Knight could take advantage of peasants.
They've got the weapons, they've got the armor, they've got the training. They could certainly abuse the people that they were supposed to be protecting. They could also turn against their noble, break their oath of fealty. The knights, therefore, were a focus.
They were someone who needed some sort of guidelines, some sort of actual conceptual framework within culture. Not just rules, not just punishments, but an ideal for them to live up to. That ideal comes into play. with something called chivalry.
Chivalry is the idea that power and strength, like what the Knights had, should actually be used morally. It should be used to protect the less powerful. It should be used to protect the vulnerable. Essentially, instead of might making right, power automatically means that you have control and you are right, chivalry suggests that might should serve right.
Might should be used for right. Essentially, power and strength should be used for the right reasons. It should be kept within morality.
The strong protect the weak instead of abusing them. That idea of chivalry is a powerful idea. It's a powerful force, and it is promoted in all aspects of medieval culture.
It's so effective that, well, dang it, we're still promoting the ideas of chivalry today. When most people think of knights, they go think of knights as brave and bold and honorable knights in shining armor. Guys, that's chivalry.
It comes from this concept, this PR movement during the Middle Ages. Now, among the people who are the strongest promoters of this PR movement, there are some of the people who actually spread this idea, are troubadours. Troubadours are traveling entertainers and performers who move across Europe freely.
Troubadours are some of the only people in their own time period who can travel freely because their role is entertainers and basically their role as information spreaders. I mean... No one else travels.
No one else knows what's going on in the neighboring kingdom. The troubadour knows. Therefore, the troubadour is kind of naturally protected by, if you will, the cultural ecosystem of the Middle Ages.
The troubadour is the person who's welcome anywhere from mercenaries to king's courts. And the troubadours, their songs, their stories, the way they tell them, the way they promote themselves, all those songs and stories are all about chivalry. I mean, one of the great stories that would have been promoted by troubadours would have been the Song of Roland.
I mean... This idea of Roland being this noble knight, the idea that betrayal is the ultimate evil, the idea that good is remembered and honored, good is revenged if it dies, and evil is punished and dishonored and forever shamed in song and story. That's Troubadour. That's all of the performer going back and talking and promoting about the ideas of chivalry. It's creating a cultural norm.
Now, that cultural norm is very strongly based in ideas of morality, the ideas of the Christian church. Now, I'm not talking about, oh, look, the Christian church is promoting Christian doctrine. Yeah, absolutely, they are. But it's not just that. Chivalry comes from this idea of morality, the idea of protecting the weak and taking care of those in need that traces back to the earliest days of Christianity.
And that idea is promoted in chivalry in the stories. but it derives from it's it's based in it's rooted in the ideas of the church the church is reaching out it's trying to promote this idea of morality at every level of the feudal system for nobles they're promoting the idea of being good managers of protecting the interests of the people below them on the feudal system for knights the idea is chivalry do what is morally right use your might for right for to use it to protect the people who need protecting Even for the peasants, though, the most ignorant, the basic dirt farmers, the ideas are still promoted that one should do good. In fact, this promotion, this is the thing that holds society together.
It is the glue that keeps society functioning. That may sound strange, but essentially, in a society, we need to take care of one another, or someone has to do it for us. In our modern age, in the 21st century, often we look to the government.
We expect the government to provide social safety nets and systems structures. The government's provisions are part of what holds society together. There are glue.
In this time period, there are no government systems. In fact, the government itself can be a bit shaky. So the glue that holds the society together is the church's promise of reward from God, the church's threat of punishment from God, unless we actually got out and did good deeds, unless we helped the people around us.
There's an immediate fear. If you do not do what is right, if you don't help your neighbor, if you don't reach out and look after the needy people in society, God will know and you may be punished. There's examples. Look what these people are doing. Look at these knights.
Listen to the stories. Listen to the legends and the tales of people who did what was right. And, of course, there's a promise.
If you get out there and you do good deeds, there are amazing rewards in store. If you serve society, if you help your neighbor, if you are a good moral person, you will have that reward. Now, part of what makes this work, part of the glue that holds this together, is the fact that the church actually does provide some concept, some example of what that reward is going to look like.
I mean, we don't think about it. We live in a different time period and a different culture. But in the Middle Ages, you can say, oh, yes, you're going to go to a wonderful, beautiful place where it's always warm and there's beautiful music. And our friend Cletus, the turnip farmer, is going to go. What's that like?
I live in a one-room dirt house and we sleep with the sheep when it's cold. I saw a pig I liked once. I mean, they have no concept, none, of what this perfect paradise that the church is promising is actually like. Except, except for the church itself.
The buildings themselves, these church structures during the Middle Ages, are vitally important to getting this message of taking care of your neighbor. This promise of a wonderful paradise based on your actions of doing good things for others. The example that they hold up of what this place will be like is that it will be a thousand times better than the church itself. And the church buildings are spectacular. Now, don't get me wrong.
The church here is still building the same kind of buildings they were building under the Roman Empire. They're still called basilicas or Romanesque basilicas. Mostly because, well, they're like the ones from Rome. Yeah, that.
Now these Romanesque basilicas, these structures, they are still modeled after those buildings that the Christians began using under the Roman Empire. These large buildings that were originally places for public meetings. These Romanesque basilicas still use Roman architectural devices. For example, the ceilings of them use rounded Roman arches.
The ceilings are actually usually what are called barrel vaults, which are essentially rounded Roman arches connected together by interlocking brickwork. These rounded barrel vaults, like all Roman arches, direct the weight downward and outward. As the heavy weight of the roof of the basilica pushes downward and outward, the walls provide a strong, thick support structure.
These Romanesque basilicas are incredibly strong, but they're also quite dark, because the walls have to be thick enough to support the weight of the roof. There aren't very many openings in these Romanesque basilicas, simply because those openings are not an option. They are requiring those strong walls because as the arch falls outward, the walls push inward, keeping the basilica strong and stable for the worshipers. Now, these basilicas are beautiful.
I mean, if you look at this. This is impressive to us. In the photograph on your screen, you can see the size of the people at the bottom, the size of the tourists compared to the size of the church.
These buildings are absolutely beautiful, and even by modern standards, we look at these basilicas and we're like, wow, that's amazing. Okay, you're coming from a house with plumbing and air conditioning. Imagine what it was like for a medieval peasant who lived in a little shack with a dirt floor, and quite seriously, would bring animals in to sleep with them in the winter when it was cold.
Imagine what it was like for them to walk into one of these places. And when they walked into these places, they were told that if they were good, if they did good deeds, if they helped their neighbor, if they looked out for the people around them, they would go to a place a thousand times more beautiful than this when they died. Yeah.
Oh yeah, that's promise. That's motivation. This gives an example, and this is, it's going to be a thousand times better than this.
The problem, however, begins to come in. When the monks, the actual literate people of the church, begin to become increasingly dissatisfied with these basilicas. Why?
I mean, they're beautiful. They've been building these things for, like, hundreds of years. What's wrong with a basilica? Well, the thing that actually the monks think is wrong with a basilica? Oh, dang it.
It's all Plato's fault. See, you knew you hated Plato on that quiz for a reason. The reason the monks become dissatisfied with Plato? Sorry, the reason the monks have become dissatisfied with the basilica is because they begin copying Plato's writings. As they begin scribing and copying books in their monasteries, they actually begin copying the works of Plato.
Now, you remember Plato. Plato says that this world around us is just shadow. We're in the cave looking at that wall. We don't see the true world. The real world is just basically a reflection.
It's shadows. The true world is outside of this. The place where the philosopher escapes to. The place that people actually get to see the truth as they get out of this shadowy cave. Beauty is actually a kind of byproduct of that.
Learning, education, understanding ourselves is the result of realizing this world is false and there is a true beautiful world out there seen by philosophers. Remember in Plato's ideas, light represents knowledge and truth. The light is what even casts the shadows for us to see on the wall of that cave.
And of course, when the philosopher escapes, light is what shows him the true world after he goes through the pain of his eyes adjusting. These little medieval monks, they actually read Plato's stuff, and they find stuff they recognize. They find stuff that is similar enough to their own Christian beliefs that they think, Plato has something right! This man is brilliant, even if he is, insert medieval monk, an evil pagan. He understands that there is truth that supersedes even paganism.
Now, for these monks, what they're seeing, the world of forms is the true world. This world is just a shadow. In their mind, absolutely. Heaven is the true world. It's perfect.
It's ideal. This world is just a flawed shadow of that perfect world. Beauty is good.
And ultimately, we find truth in the spiritual. They're monks, guys. They don't really get into the physical world. Remember, they take a vow to avoid the physical world.
For them, light equals knowledge and truth. And in their Bible, the Bible says that God is light. So Plato had it right because all wisdom and knowledge and truth comes from God.
And the Bible says God is light. So light is actually a symbol of God. These Plato copying monks take these ideas and these connections they see between Plato's ideas and Christianity, and they begin writing about, talking about, thinking about this idea called Neo-Platonism.
Neoplatonism is essentially what happens when you cross Christianity with the ideas of Plato. For Neoplatonism, light is actually a symbol of God and God's power. Beauty is something that leads us closer to God.
There is a split, a division between the physical and the spiritual. Just like for Plato, there's a split between the cave and the world outside. Those two things for the Christian monks are connected by the Spirit and Jesus'sacrifice.
Jesus is the path to the philosopher king, essentially. Truth is found in the spiritual or the ideal, not in the physical. For the monks, all of these Neo-Platonic ideas, they cause a problem with basilicas. Because the basilicas are big, they're beautiful, they're dark. Because they need those walls to support the weight of the barrel-vaulted ceiling, that arched roof.
The monks, they want something more, something different. They want a church that is filled with light. Because to them, in Neo-Platonic thought, light... symbolizes God, the source of all knowledge and truth. That means symbolic.
There has to be light in the church. Fiat lux is actually the Latin for let there be light. And that's what these monks want.
They need to find ways to open up churches, to include more and more windows. They want windows to let light into the church, symbolically letting God into their church. They want windows that have stained glass panels that tell stories, educating people about God through the symbolism of light.
Now they've got to figure out a way to make the windows in the walls and up to this point that hasn't really been possible because a basilica needs those big thick walls in order to hold up the weight of the roof essentially these monks have to figure out a way to support the weight of the roof without thick walls one of the first people to do that is actually a French abbot the leader of a monastery named Abbott su jay and he pioneers many of these techniques with the help of his architects in a church called San Denis Among the greatest innovations for these new styles of churches are something called flying buttresses. Flying buttresses are essentially external support structures. They go outside the walls of the church.
And as the roof pushes downward and the walls try to fall outward, the flying buttresses push inward, supporting the weight of the roof. Essentially, as the arch tries to fall out, the flying buttress pushes in. The location of flying buttresses are very important.
because essentially the roof of the church pushes downward and outward causing the walls to want to buckle or curve outward at a particular pressure point the flying buttress is actually connected the external support structure is connected to the wall of the church pushing inward as the wall tries to buckle outward these external support structures balance the weight of the roof that means the wall is no longer supported by there are the roof i mean rephrase stop rewind That means that the wall is no longer supporting the weight of the roof. Instead, that wall can have windows in it. It can have open spaces in it. Because the wall doesn't have to hold up the roof.
The wall is no longer supporting that weight. Instead, the structure outside, the flying buttress, is actually the thing that is holding up and supporting the weight of the roof. These flying buttresses, these external support structures, are actually breathtakingly gorgeous.
Both of these are examples on two different churches of flying buttresses. You can see the windows in the wall in the picture on the right. Those windows are only possible because of that external support structure. Flying buttresses push in, supporting the weight of the roof as that wall tries to buckle outward under the pressure of the roof.
The flying buttresses hold it strong, opening up space for light, that single vital part of Neoplatonism, and allowing these churches to be able to fly. to be filled with what symbolically represents the power of God, those lights coming in from windows. The second major innovation introduced is actually a new structure for the roof.
Instead of those rounded arches, what we today would call a barrel vault, pushing just simply downward and outward to the side, a new style of roof is introduced that is created by actually connecting two barrel vaults. It connects them at 90 degree angles, allowing the pressure, instead of being distributed out along a thick wall at the sides, it centers the pressure on four specific points, or piers. Essentially what this means is that instead of the walls having to be thick and solid all the way along the sides of the church, there are particular pressure points, which can of course then be supported by flying buttresses outside. This combination of arches, combination of vaults into these pressure points is called a groin vault and ultimately a ribbed vault. A groin or ribbed vault actually is easily recognizable by the ribs or connecting points underneath.
In the example on your screen, you can actually see the ribs or lines coming down in four different directions from the central keystone. the heart of this groin vault or this ribbed vault. Those ribs then divide the weight out in directions that push it downward onto piers or specific points.
It allows so much more open space. You can see this is actually being supported by columns instead of big thick walls. For the Neoplatonists, this is important because it allows more light into the church. It provides a stable support structure to hold up the weight of the roof. while still providing open spaces in the walls to let in that symbolic light representing the power of God.
These innovations, both the external flying buttresses and the ribbed vault, allow churches to appear very different. If you look on your left, that's a Romanesque-style basilica. Rounded arches, much darker at the top.
No windows in those side walls letting light, symbolically the power of God, in through the structure of the church. On your right-hand side, you'll see a Romanesque or a Gothic cathedral. Not a Romanesque basilica, but a new style of this gothic cathedral.
It's bigger, it's wider. The top of the church has the X shape of a ribbed vault, dividing the weight out of those particular points, which can then be supported by flying buttresses outside the church. And you can see that the church is brighter because there are windows in the walls, allowing light in. Symbolically, according to the ideas of Neoplatonism, bringing in light, power of God, wisdom, and knowledge.
into the church itself. These structures are amazing, but they're certainly not cheap and they're certainly not quick. Remember these people, they have no power tools. They can't just like bring in scaffolds and cherry pickers and build these churches. Everything, everything.
Creating a Gothic cathedral by hand is often a job that takes over a hundred years. These Gothic cathedrals often take over a century to completion. Why on earth do people do this? I mean, This is millions upon millions upon millions of dollars.
It is a century of time. This is a huge commitment of resources. Why would anybody choose to actually undertake this project? Of course, yes, obviously, it's creating a place to worship God.
And this is a way for people to physically affirm their faith, to show each other and God how deeply they believe. But there's so much more than that. These churches are important. Because again, they provide an example.
They give people a hint of what heaven is going to be like. As gorgeous as Gothic cathedrals are, and you're going to see a bunch of them on your discussion board. As gorgeous as Gothic cathedrals are, the church can tell people walking in, people who've never seen anything bigger than a dirt-floored shack, that heaven is going to be a thousand times better than this if they look after the people around them.
If they form a society where people help one another. If they do good deeds. Not only that.
The churches actually are education centers. These Gothic cathedrals are decorated. They're decorated. Every piece of them is decorated. They're so beautiful.
And all of those decorations are actually symbols that tell stories. If you remember the Lindisfarne Gospels, those Gospels actually included pictures that symbolized things in the text. Like the Mark, the Gospel of Mark was symbolized by a lion.
The Gospel of John was symbolized by an eagle. Cathedrals are covered in pictures like that, that actually provide a way of educating people through pictures. Essentially, the cathedral is a huge picture book. They present difficult ideas and doctrines through object lessons. Everything from the pictures in the stained glass windows to the carvings on the side of the church, they are teaching tools for the church itself.
The church actually also houses relics, or pieces of saints that are believed to hold special power. tourist attractions that people travel to visit to show their faith, to show their belief. Creating this church makes tourism for a town or a city. Tourism is brought because people want to go to this cathedral. This thing is beautiful.
It houses memories, pieces, relics of saints, ideas from the past, things that might give special blessings to people. Not only that, this church is a place to worship God and to learn. They don't have schools. The church is their school.
So people will travel from all over Europe to come visit these cathedrals. The bigger the cathedral, the bigger the tourist crowd. And guys, if you live in Florida, you know the power of tourism.
It's the reason we don't pay state income tax. Tourists are awesome and the medieval communities know that. It is worth the tens of millions of dollars. It is worth a century of building in order to have a structure that will guarantee the economic future of your community. They are tourist attractions that guarantee the future of your town.
And not only that, they also serve as a gathering place and a marketplace, a central hub for your community as well as for tourism. These Gothic cathedrals are arguably the most impressive expression of art from the medieval period. They incorporate everything from paintings to carvings. to stained glass windows, all of which emphasize and tell the stories of the Bible and of Christianity to people who cannot actually read and write.
They incorporate secular elements that help teach people about farming, about their culture, about their government. They teach people about life itself, and they hold up an example to them of what the promise of heaven is going to be like. These Gothic cathedrals are the hub of life in the community. They are beautiful expressions of art that tie directly to culture and encourage and nurture people's hope for a better society, a better future, and express their cultural ideals.
And in the end, that's what art is all about.