Tóm tắt

The student of Mediaeval architecture, especially of the Gothic era, finds perhaps its strongest appeal in the peculiar structural character which it possesses. Greek architecture, even at its best, strongly reflects a preceding art of building in wood. Roman architecture, when it does not closely follow its Greek prototype, often depends upon a mere revetment or surface treatment for its effects, and the Renaissance builders in general followed this lead. Only in the Middle Ages was the structure truly allowed to furnish its own decoration, and the decoration itself made structural. And by far the greatest single problem of construction was that of vaulting. A knowledge of vaulting is, therefore, essential for the thorough student of Mediaeval architecture. On the vaulting system depend in a large measure the shape of piers and buttresses, the size and form ofrnwindows and arches, and a host of decorative mouldings and details which formrnthe complex whole of Mediaeval construction. Inheriting from Early Christian times a church of well-established plan, the builders of the eleventh to the sixteenth centuries set themselves the problem of substituting for the wooden roof of this Early Christian Basilica a covering of masonry which would resist the conflagrations that were among the mostrndestructive forces of the Middle Ages. It is with these efforts that the followingrnpages are to deal. It has been my purpose to classify and to discuss in arnsystematic manner what has been gathered from authorities here and abroad andrnfrom a study of the monuments themselves.