Today, we perceive Gothic cathedrals as light-filled forms representing the sacred. The colored light projected from brightly-colored stained glass windows onto the walls and floors of these buildings suggests the presence of divinity. Suger (1081–1151CE), the abbot of the monastery of Saint-Denis, is credited with originating Gothic architecture. However, focus on form and structure has elided attention to the material out of which medieval churches were made. When Suger describes the early church he was replacing, he says that the gold and gems it contained beamed outwardly with a gleaming light that filled the eye. When he restored his church and filled it with the shining souls of his ecclesia, he repeated God’s divine act of creation. His restored church imitated the precious stones that could be shaped and polished to reveal divine light. By crafting stone, Suger fulfilled the divine plan to make heaven on earth.
- Cover
- Table of Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- 1 Materializing the Way
- Making Cosmology Soteriological
- Reimagining Privation
- Constructing a Material Soteriology
- Making Creation Beautiful
- Rebuilding the Cosmological Wall
- 2 Crafting Prayer
- Man as Stone
- The Crafting of Man
- Pneumatic Transformations
- The Craft of Prayer
- 3 The Everflowing Fountain
- Deserting Place and Locating the Wilderness
- Sealing Sewers
- Emptying Sewers
- Cleansing the House
- Purifying water
- Building the Wall of the Church
- Repairing the Wall of the Church
- Experiencing Christ
- 4 Embodying Heaven on Earth
- Knowing Stone
- Containing Divinity
- Warming the Heart
- Reconstructing the Ecclesia
- The Mystic’s Immaterial Vision
- Postface: Dematerializing Architecture
- Maker’s Knowledge and Maker’s Wisdom
- Matter Matters
- Materializing the Ineffable
- Toward Knowledge as Truth: Failed Beginnings
- Bibliography
- Primary Sources:
- Secondary Sources:
- Index
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