John Hendrix

Bishop Robert Grosseteste and Lincoln Cathedral provides a much-needed and in-depth investigation of Grosseteste’s relationship to the medieval cathedral at Lincoln and the surrounding city. The architecture and topography of Lincoln Cathedral are examined in their cultural contexts, in relation to scholastic philosophy, science and cosmology, and medieval ideas about light and geometry, as highlighted in the writings of Robert Grosseteste - bishop of Lincoln Cathedral. At the same time the architecture of the cathedral is considered in relation to the roles of the clergy and masons; the policies of the bishop; matters of governance, worship and education; ecclesiastical hierarchy, church liturgy, politics and processionals. Investigations include parallel studies of Salisbury Cathedral and Charlemagne’s Palatine Chapel at Aachen, highlighting important connections in regard to ceremonial itineraries and political/religious hierarchies. Finally, the book explores Grosseteste’s ideas in the broader context of medieval and Renaissance cosmologies, optics/perspective, natural philosophy and experimental science. The contributors to this volume make an important contribution to our current understanding of the relation between architecture, theology, politics and society during the Middle Ages, and how religious spaces were conceived and experienced.

The geometrical elements in the architecture of Lincoln Cathedral, in the vaulting and elevations, can be compared to the geometries described by Robert Grosseteste in his cosmologies. The architecture can be read as a catechism of the cosmologies. The geometries appear in the cathedral for the first time in the history of architecture to explain the generation, emanation, reflection, refraction and rarefaction of light as it forms the material world. The proposition is that the geometries of the architecture of Lincoln Cathedral can be understood in relation to the geometries which are the basis of the cosmologies of Robert Grosseteste, Bishop of Lincoln 1235–53, in particular De lineis, angulis et figuris, and De luce. Many of the architectural forms at Lincoln Cathedral are unprecedented in their appearance or use, and they form the basic vocabulary for the entire development of English Gothic architecture. Their radically new appearance has never been adequately explained. Vocabulary elements such as the ridge pole, tierceron or non-structural rib, lierne or segmented ridge rib, flying rib, conoid springer vault or cone of ribs rising from the springer pole in the elevation, triradial vaulting or three ribs meeting at the ridge pole, double syncopated or overlapping arcading, and the bundled and ribbed umbrella column, all originate in some form or are developed for the first time in Lincoln. All of the geometries which appear for the first time in the architecture appear in the cosmologies of Grosseteste, for the purpose of explaining the generation, emanation, reflection, refraction, and rarefaction of light as it forms the material world in geometrical configurations. The cathedral would thus be a catechism of the geometrical substructure of the physical world, in the tradition of the Timaeus of Plato. There is no evidence that the concepts were dictated by Grosseteste directly to masons, but it is well known that such concepts permeated medieval architecture and city planning, and that they were filtered down through all trades involved in construction of the city and the cathedral. Grosseteste’s cosmologies represent a core achievement of Scholasticism, the synthesis of classical philosophy and Catholic theology, which is embodied in the architecture of the cathedral.

Architecture has an ethical responsibility to facilitate intellectual development. This proposition might seem surprising since architecture is generally expected to provide shelter, accommodate activity, and be aesthetically pleasing—as Vitruvius says in De architectura to take into account firmitatis, utilitatis, and venustatis. But Vitruvius also says that “Both in general and especially in architecture are these two things found; that which signifies and that which is signified. That which is signified is the thing proposed about which we speak; that which signifies is the demonstration unfolded in systems of precepts”. Architecture is the organization of space using mathematics and geometry; it is an intellectual act, and therefore it must necessarily signify something, as does any language. Architects have an ethical responsibility to pay attention to what is being signified, along with providing firmitatis, utilitatis and venustatis.

Architecture can be seen as the psyche, or collective mind, in spatial and structural form, of a culture. Until the invention of the printing press, architecture was the primary means of the expression and com-munication of the ideas, values, and beliefs of a culture. There are important ways in which architecture is still capable of more completely communicating the human condition than the printed word. It is essential that architects not lose sight of the potentials for architecture to communicate and represent the human psyche and the human condition, and not stop developing the potentials for architecture to play those roles.

The contradiction between form and function should be seen as an important element in architecture. Modernist functionalism prioritized the necessity that form is seen as a consequence of function, adapting Louis Sullivan’s credo that “form follows function,” although Sullivan was not talking about the functional requirements of a building in relation to its form - he was talking about relationships in nature and the creative process. Nevertheless, architecture needs to be understood beyond the formula of “form follows function.” This is not to deny the importance of functionalism in architecture, or to deny that there is a necessary relation between form and function in architecture, but only to reveal that the contradiction between form and function also plays an important role in architecture.

The organization of Lincoln Cathedral reinforces the hierarchical organization of a just society based on Christian morality. All of the details of the architecture reinforce the intellectual comprehension of the just or the good on the part of the worshipper. The details are designed to facilitate the ascension of the mind of the visitor from the physical world to a metaphysical reality that reinforces justice. Bringing together leading scholars in the fields of criminology, international law, philosophy and architectural history and theory, this book examines the interrelationships between architecture and justice, highlighting the provocative and curiously ambiguous juncture between the two. Illustrated by a range of disparate and diverse case studies, it draws out the formal language of justice, and extends the effects that architecture has on both the place of, and the individuals subject to, justice. With its multi-disciplinary perspective, the study serves as a platform on which to debate the relationships between the ceremonial, legalistic, administrative and penal aspects of justice, and the spaces that constitute their settings.

It is through the dialectics of form and function in architecture, and in particular in the contradiction between the two, that the artistic and aesthetic dimensions of architecture can be developed: its expression of ideas, reflection of human identity, its ethics of responsibility to engage human culture, and its beauty. Architecture is capable of facilitating intellectual development, and of expressing ideas which transcend its material, programmatic and structural functions; in short, architecture is capable of being art, or poetry. Through its forms, and in the dialectic between form and function, architecture is capable of expressing important aspects of individual and cultural identity, as a humanistic art form. As a form of artistic expression, architecture can have more value in people’s lives.