HIST-338 Lecture 7: religious architecture
20 Nov 2020
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Document Summary
Specifically religious architecture was the dominant art form. From one end of europe to another tens of thousands of cathedrals churches abbeys and monastic chapels were constructed in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. In france alone workers mined more stone for building churches in these two hundred years than the slaves of ancient egypt quarried in three thousand years of pyramid- temple- palace- building for the pharaohs. In mediterranean europe workers turned first to the already-quarried stone of the old roman ruins which they simply dismantled. The colosseum in rome for example which in the eleventh century had been used as an enclosed meadow for pasturing sheep lost much of its stone for use elsewhere. Quarrymen stone masons architects engineers and construction workers of all types had little difficulty in finding employment. This was construction not on the large but on the colossal scale.
