Why Gothic cathedrals?

Scott's sympathy for the Albigensian cause, among other religious and political fissures, vis-a-vis the Catholic hierarchy leads him to connect Gothic cathedral building with a larger Catholic project to reassert power and to regain control of dissenters. In a following chapter, Scott estimates the tremendous costs, especially the immaterial, on a community devoted to such a project. He concludes, "Both modern scholars who see cathedrals as great monuments to community-building and those who see them as instruments of exploitation, oppression, and violence are probably right in the sense that both are pointing to important truths" (99). Scott seems to take both these sides, but without (yet) engaging any relationship to God, prayer, piety, liturgy, theology, etc.

Brothers' current rating: 3 out of 5

Current page as of 6/22/06: p. 113