The secrets of a great cathedral

Om denne boken

"The secrets of a great cathedral" by H. D. M. Spence-Jones is a historical-architectural study written in the early 20th century. It explains the origins and purposes of major features of medieval cathedrals—especially in the Romanesque tradition—focusing on elements like the triforium, Lady Chapel, crypt, and cloister, with Gloucester Cathedral as a recurring reference point. Drawing on leading scholarship, it aims to give lay visitors clear answers to common questions about how great churches were conceived and built.

The opening of the work states the author’s aim as Dean of Gloucester: to answer frequent visitor questions about what “Romanesque” means and where cathedral features come from, tracing the style back long before the Normans. It contrasts two modern authorities—Rivoira (rooting Romanesque in Italy) and Sir Thomas Jackson (emphasizing Constantinople and the East)—then flags chapters on the triforium’s Eastern origins, the rise of Lady Chapels with Marian devotion, the Western-only crypt tradition tied to St Peter’s tomb, the monastic cloister, and Gloucester’s peculiar S. Petronilla link. The first chapter defines Romanesque as a consistent round-arch style (per Freeman) rooted in ante-classical Roman practice, illustrates its early maturity in Diocletian’s palace and especially Ravenna’s great fifth–sixth century basilicas, and notes their plain exteriors but sumptuous interiors. After the Lombard conquest, it traces the Comacine Guild—successors to Roman building collegia—based at Como, reviving and spreading the style, with gradual advances like vaulting. It sketches the style’s early English traces (Benedict Biscop, Wilfrid), the isolated German example at Aachen, and France’s losses from Saracen and Viking devastations before a church-building boom around the eleventh century with strong regional variants. It then introduces Norman-Romanesque via William of Volpiano and Lanfranc, the vast English building surge after the Conquest—often framed as acts of expiation—and closes this opening sweep with notes on campaniles and the Comacine “Solomon’s knot” motif.