Analysis Of Abbot Suger Of Saint Denis Abbey

Abbot Suger of Saint Denis, inspired by what he though were the writings of Saint Denis, designed and built a choir filled with radiance. Believing that light was the presence of Divine Spirit, Suger’s new choir was filled with light. Saint Denis Abbey’s newly designed choir would herald a revolution in architecture which would ripple throughout the culture of Christendom. The Italians would call the style Gothic. Gothic, meant as a slight, was so named to suggest that the culture of Christendom had been destroyed by the Goth barbarians. However, the influence of opus modernum, modern work, would change more than the architecture of churches in Europe. The Gothic style would influence the culture of Europe. The Gothic movement was a change …show more content…
The thinner walls of the Gothic style permitted the inclusion stained glass. The beautiful stain glass served a dual purpose, one to decorate the walls of the cathedral with color and light. The second purpose and in some ways the more important one was to educate the illiterate mass. The scenes depicted in the glass reinforce the stories found in the bible and taught to the mass by the clergy. The glass also served as a means of celebrating the French crown and its good works. The fleur-de-lis symbol of the French King glittered in the glorious imagery of the stain glass windows that filled the Gothic cathedrals with color and light, a less than subtle nod to the French crown. However, the stain glass wasn’t the only beautiful thing to fill the soaring halls of the chapel. Music evolved from the single tone of the Gregorian chant to the choir of voices singing intertwining melodies. Raising up into the heavens, filled shimming light and enchanting voices, the Gothic cathedral was Heaven on Earth. The distant between the common man and God was diminished by the increasing use of naturalism in art and sculpture. Even as the cathedral changed so did the culture surrounding …show more content…
The statue of Saint Theodore is an example of contrapposto; his stance suggest a shift in weight to one foot just like a man at rest would naturally stand. The robes of figures in sculpture and paintings are made to appear as if a real body lies beneath. The Angel of Annunciation at Reims Cathedral is an excellent example of the naturalism of the Gothic movement, the angel is distinctively female and her face and body language are expressive. Unlike earlier works the Angel of Annunciation and the statue of Saint Theodore are free standing and life-like. Grotti’s painting, the Lamentation, shows the real life sorrow of the followers of Christ rather than the idealized expression of salvation through sacrifice. Even literature evolved, writers wrote in the vernacular, or common language of the people rather than in the Latin of previous works. Dante’s Divine Comedy and Chaucer Canterbury Tales are two of the more well-known works written in the vernacular. The world was changing the influence of the church remained, but the influence of commerce could no longer be