This is both incredible and I think… “misses the point” is the wrong phrase, but maybe omits something both subtle and crucial in the process.
A gothic cathedral is both an incredible work of art and also the work of hundreds or thousands of hands over decades and centuries - you are looking not just at the final product, but at the love and commitment it took to make that work of art, the long-term dedication and belief that it should exist even if we don’t live to see it exist. You’re looking at an expression of love not just for God and for art and beauty, but for future generations and people we’ll never know. The time and effort isn’t an unfortunate part of the process, it’s intrinsic to what we feel when we witness the cathedral - a connection to others, reaching both ways.
I understand why the monks have developed this technique, and I don’t disagree with them - the act of building a gothic cathedral is outside the capacity of modern society. I’ll never begrudge someone a hack to preserve some beauty in this machine we’ve created. But I can’t help but feel like they’ve created a facsimile of a cathedral - they’ve created the palace at Disneyland, not Notre Dame.
The proportions, materials, overall design is quite beautiful. How is that not an expression to God? Having a few hundred people die falling off of scaffolding and taking 50 years to build is not helping anyone today.
Perhaps a few dead bodies and a couple hundred years of recitations will do the trick?
Put another way, if monks in the year 1k had a CNC router like this, they wouldn’t have peasants take 50 years to arrive at their expression to God.
It’s the architecture and the design that reflects the Lord almighty. The peasants doing it are a means to an end: so the church stands tall, so they can massacre the non-believers, burn witches, infidels, and imprison astronomers. All in the comfort of a beautiful cathedral.
If the monks in the year 1k had CNC machines, they’d have built bigger and more elaborate cathedrals. The act was the message. The gothic cathedral was impossible by medieval standards, and that was part of the act of building it.
And, to your point, yes, if the monks followed the construction with a hundred years of prayer and sacrifice to consecrate the building, indeed the building would carry a more powerful emotional resonance than it does now. The sacrifice is the point, the effort is the point. It’s an act of devotion, not just one of construction.
Remember that this is a Catholic church, the church the monks worship in. Its primary role is to be a house for the Holy Eucharist and a place for the worship of God. The devotion in its creation is part of that; the beauty it embodies is in aid of that. For the monks, the emotional resonance stems from all of that, but is not in fact the point.
I realize most folks here have a different world view; but in the end, this building has no point whatsoever apart from how the monks see it.
For these monks and their church that may not be the point, for medieval churches it very much was. God was not something that a small group of people in the church believed in, God was a fact to those living in those places at those times. You’re right that folks here have a different world view, but you can’t understand the cathedral without understanding the world view of those who built it.
And - “this building has no point whatsoever apart from how the monks see it” is true for everything and every viewpoint.
Not every building with stone carvings will be gothic cathedrals with regular incomes- there will be thousands of small churches out there, which don't have the budget for expensive stonemasons to hand carve items for repairs.
If we want to protect historic buildings for generations to enjoy then we're going to need to be more pragmatic.
The Sagrada Família is a "recently" built cathedral, and I'd say is on a similar level as a Gothic cathedral. So modern society is not necessarily incapable of similar feats.
Yes, I’d agree with this. I’d almost say it’s the exception that proves the rule - it’s such an exceptional project in the modern sense that its presence highlights the absence of others.
I suppose things like the Svalbard seed vault are similar secular efforts, as is the Long Now’s clock, although that feels somewhat more self-indulgent than these others. I’m interested in others, if you can think of them.
I do agree with you over all, but I am not certain it's outside the capacity of modern society. You only need to look at the group in France[0] where they are building a medieval castle using only period appropriate tools and techniques. It is more of a research project than an act of devotion, but I think it demonstrates that we are still capable of such acts.
We have time/energy/money in amounts heretofore not available to us. It's a question of motivation and the culture that produces it. If society's highest common good and life's highest aspirations are materialistic and consumerist, then where does something like this fit in? What for? It becomes a nice curiosity and a tourist stop at best and that's not much much of a motive.
No, we prefer to spend all our time/energy/money on lesser things.
You indeed do, and I support that. I wonder, though - setting aside the catholic notion of God and the associated church embedded in this project, how do you think of future generations? How do you think about things beyond yourself? How do you consider the impacts of your actions on the future?
I’m not being facetious with these questions, nor am I making an accusation - I think it’s a genuinely interesting question for the modern world, and it’s what I’m circling around here more than the notion of glorying god: the cathedral was a gift to the humans of future generations, one whose sacrifice indicated the value its makers placed on the wellbeing of its recipients. How do you think of your actions in that light? Do you?
There is a balance. I've seen old houses - they look pretty, but as an engineer they suck. Terrible insulation, bad (ergonomic) layout... Plenty of useless features - who needs cable TV or phone jacks these days...
Which means there needs to be a balance - looks nice enough for today, but don't think for a moment it will meet the needs of the future so it needs to be easy to replace as well.
There’s a balance, sure - I’m asking you what you put on the long side of the ledger.
Regarding houses - American architecture starting around the 40s divorced itself from its locale, but a great deal of older houses were built to be long-term dwellings, and this is reflected in their architecture, where they sit, how the wind and sun move across the structure, the materials they use, etc in a way that still generates value today. They may be harder to run a CAT5 through, but they’re a hell of a lot easier to keep cool in the summer.
It's not an accident that the architecture of the Canadian National Gallery explicitly references Christian church architecture.
Or the Smithsonian. Or the NASA museum at Cape Canaveral. Also cathedrals.
Walking the entire length of a Saturn V rocket laid on its side at the NASA museum at Cape Canaveral is as close to a holy moment as this old atheist has ever experienced.
Not that I disagree, but I want to confirm: you are suggesting the reason (or one of the reasons) they chose to do stone carving, as opposed to some other form of monastic pursuit, was because it took a lot of time and effort?
A great deal of monastic pursuit was in the interest of slowing down, focusing, applying one’s entire self to something, and recognizing the greatness of god and creation, so yes, anything that encouraged focus and contemplation would have been privileged on those merits.
> But I can’t help but feel like they’ve created a facsimile of a cathedral - they’ve created the palace at Disneyland, not Versailles.
You could at least compare to Notre Dame. It’s a bit tone deaf to draw comparison to Versailles, which was a vanity project to glorify the French monarchy.
I think you're missing a subtlety of the situation. You're right that gothic cathedrals were enormous undertakings, and that the enormity was itself a worshipful and meditative act that drew in the entire community, current and future.
Even with the CNC machines, this is still a multi-decade endeavor that will span generations because the number of monks (and outside support) is small and not getting larger. They've scaled down the work required to match their capabilities, and still creating something that will last centuries. Relative to their community, it's still a cathedral effort.
A gothic cathedral is both an incredible work of art and also the work of hundreds or thousands of hands over decades and centuries - you are looking not just at the final product, but at the love and commitment it took to make that work of art, the long-term dedication and belief that it should exist even if we don’t live to see it exist. You’re looking at an expression of love not just for God and for art and beauty, but for future generations and people we’ll never know. The time and effort isn’t an unfortunate part of the process, it’s intrinsic to what we feel when we witness the cathedral - a connection to others, reaching both ways.
I understand why the monks have developed this technique, and I don’t disagree with them - the act of building a gothic cathedral is outside the capacity of modern society. I’ll never begrudge someone a hack to preserve some beauty in this machine we’ve created. But I can’t help but feel like they’ve created a facsimile of a cathedral - they’ve created the palace at Disneyland, not Notre Dame.