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Why did they build expensive medieval churches?
Bryan Caplan asks (the rest of the post is interesting on other matters):
Seeing a bunch of French cathedrals makes me even more skeptical of the claim (made by Larry Iannaccone and others) that people weren't more religious in earlier centuries. If people weren't far more religious in the Middle Ages, why did they pour such a high fraction of their surplus wealth into century-long religious architectural projects? You could say "It was primarily rulers, not donors, who allocated the funds," but that just pushes the question back a step. Were rulers vastly more religious than the masses? That's hard to believe. Were rulers trying to impress the masses by building churches? Well, why would churches impress the masses unless they were highly religious?
His answer:
Religious architecture and art were to medieval feudalism what advertising and commercialism are to modern capitalism: A rather effective way to build support for the status quo using aesthetics instead of argument. My claim, in short, is that Notre Dame played the same role during the Middle Ages that fashion magazines play today. Notre Dame was not an argument for feudalism, and Elle is not an argument for capitalism. But both are powerful ways to make regular people buy into the system.
I would add that churches were a form of fiscal policy and the associated spending was a way to hand out goodies to political allies. (This is especially important if the finished project takes decades or centuries to materialize.) In a time of political decentralization it wasn't easy to construct or maintain a long distance road. So you had to put a lot of expense in one easy-to-guard place and in a politically correct way. Churches were the obvious choice. Churches may have been an efficient means to store wealth for other reasons as well. If someone is going to plunder you on the run, they can wreck a church but they can't dissemble and carry away its value very easily.
Robin Hanson might argue that beautiful churches also signaled the status of the elites who built them.
Posted by Tyler Cowen on May 31, 2008 at 12:22 PM in History | Permalink
Comments
Why do businesses build huge "cathedrals" for their main headquarters? They could just as easily and more efficiently operate out of plain vanilla office space. The church certainly wielded much more power than it does now. Probably more akin to the reverence that we hold corporations today. Religion does not always need to be about God. Someday scholars will study Federal Reserve pronouncements with that sort of academic detachment that we now view ancient papal decrees. Yes. At the time, they meant something but in hindsight they seem to be more arrogant gibberish.
Posted by: GeorgeNYC at May 31, 2008 1:17:24 PM
I don't understand how churches helped rulers "hand out goodies to political allies".
Posted by: kerimcan at May 31, 2008 1:21:36 PM
This is a rather remarkable question, particularly with respect to the the regional social structures of France during the periods examined.
Regional social structures predominated. The most consistent form of commonality for social cohesion was the Roman Catholic Church (with the Albigensian [Cathar - Later Huguenot as well]exception, which was temporarily eliminated by force of arms).
This preceded any form of "National identity," or, indeed, the submergence of regional dialects. Regions were centered around market centers, and the building of cathedrals reinforced the regional cohesion, which was often in some form of competition with other regions. Some of this effect lingers (terrior?). Religion and the symbolism of the cathedral had a unifying effect, noted by the ruling elites and the developing bourgoisie, not to mention the hierarchy of the Church.
What was to become and be incorporated into France was not then "France."
Posted by: R Richard Schweitzer at May 31, 2008 1:22:38 PM
Well, they can probably dissemble pretty easily, but that doesn't help them take a church apart.
Posted by: Aaron Brown at May 31, 2008 1:26:16 PM
It has become very noticeable in England that by far the most stylish, opulent and distinctive buildings completed over the past 25 years are the HQ buildings the local councils build for themselves.
In many cases the universities are not far behind, but the Council buildings are more shocking because they are often in the middle of the mundane and cheaper structures in which competitive businesses operate successfully (and are all the Council planners will let them build).
I've always thought the goal is to convince the individual that he or she is small and ineffectual versus the power of their rulers. The message is 'You have no chance against people who can mobilize the resources needed to build this with your taxes'. It seems to work. Most British people are totally apathetic about their local Councils, don't vote in their elections and don't know who their elected Councillors are.
Posted by: ZFR at May 31, 2008 1:58:12 PM
I don't think I understand how churches are a store of wealth. I see how it's hard for others to plunder quickly, but that seems to work for the person who built them too. It doesn't seem like you to can reconvert a church back into consumption, say. (Also, if they're literally stores of wealth, that cuts against the signaling argument, doesn't it?)
Posted by: ryan at May 31, 2008 2:00:57 PM
Cathedral-building may well have served all those ends, but the claim that medieval people weren't more religious than modern people is still ridiculous. Markets were certainly extant and important in medieval times, so if they were just like us, why didn't they pour those resources into building beautiful malls? And was all that medieval writing, art, and music, not to mention church attendence, pure signalling without any authentic content? And if no one was religious, then signalling to whom?
Most likely, this claim depends on a purposeful distortion of what it means to "be religious." For example, if you were to equate religiousity with the rate at which people sinned, you could probably claim that medieval people were no more, and perhaps even less, religious than modern people. But that isn't what we really mean by religiosity -- we mean a particular way of looking at the world.
Posted by: David Wright at May 31, 2008 2:44:41 PM
Sounds like rail transit projects.
Posted by: Daniel Klein at May 31, 2008 3:00:42 PM
Why were some gargoyles placed so high upon the roof's as to be out of sight? As Charles Murray says: 'they carved for the eye of god.'
Posted by: Sebastian Flyte at May 31, 2008 3:15:29 PM
I asked myself the same question about the Pyramids and the Luxor Temple when I visited Egypt a few years ago. I assume religiosity is pretty nuch constant over time, so I like the costly signalling hypothesis best
Posted by: enrique at May 31, 2008 3:24:32 PM
Entry-Deterence is the answer.
there's a paper arguing that Cathedral Building was a like over-investing in capacity in order to avoid competition from protestantism. Sounds possible.
I can't find the paper, but it was in Kyklos.
Posted by: alex at May 31, 2008 3:31:36 PM
Alex:
Notre Dame begun: 1163. Luther's 95 thesis: 1517.
Doesn't sound very plausible to me.
Posted by: David Wright at May 31, 2008 3:34:38 PM
The size of buildings though out history have told us who was in powder. The early feudal lords has their castles, then the church had it's cathedrals, then government building dominated the urban landscape, now corporations overwhelm the skyline.
Those that have the gold, make the rules; or in this case the bigger buildings
Posted by: Organic George at May 31, 2008 3:43:22 PM
kerimcan --
The answer to your question is "through earmarks and no-bid contracts."
Posted by: Eric at May 31, 2008 4:11:15 PM
It's easier to evaluate religiosity if we step back from such a sharp distinction between church and state as Bryan (and perhaps Tyler) are trying to draw. Church and state were partners in the business of controlling the masses. While one doesn't have be so cynical as to believe that impressive church structures, like impressive monuments of later times, were built mainly in the interests of that controlling enterprise, that was certainly one of the effects. in both cases, the edifices help the masses identify with something bigger than themselves, a form of worship that happens to be of great use to the political elite, whether religious or secular.
Posted by: M. Hodak at May 31, 2008 4:22:14 PM
Isn't the first question to be asked, "Who paid for the cathedrals?" The church? The king? Until we know who picked up the tab it's hard to theorize intelligently about their reasons.
I also agree with Ryan about the store of wealth idea. What could be more illiquid than a cathedral?
Posted by: Bernard Yomtov at May 31, 2008 4:51:12 PM
If you want to build a lasting monument, a beautiful place of worship is probably your best bet. It doesn't have to mean you are particularly devout. It does mean that you think enough people are, that they will take care of it when you're long since dead.
Posted by: Cyrus at May 31, 2008 4:59:31 PM
BY, you're missing or ignoring my point; the church could not have gotten the funds to build the church without the support of the manor lord, and manor lords needed the legitimacy conferred by the church to maintain their iron grip over their subjects. This controlling enterprise was necessarily a joint venture. When it broke down, e.g., in the rare case where the church felt it had to buck the manor's authority, any major building project was certainly doomed to delayed.
Posted by: M. Hodak at May 31, 2008 5:04:07 PM
Iannaconne is a smart and capable guy, but how he can defend this idea of some constant
degree of religiosity over time is simply bizarre. To enrique: why do you presume a constant
degree of religiosity over time?
We know that within the last century in various parts of Europe we have seen large changes in
degrees of belief (and church attendance) in some countries. Are these observed and reported
changes all fake?
In most places, cathedrals are ultimately paid for by the locals, although often they were the
local elites and business guilds. So at Chartres Cathedral one can see particular stained glass
windows being sponsored by particular guilds or particular aristocrats, with an occasional big
window or piece being paid for by a king or a queen. Yes, advertising certainly got in there, and
around any major religious monument you are likely to see business people hawking all sorts of
things from statues to relics to other effluvia. Does this mean they, or more precisely their
customers, are not actually religious?
Posted by: Barkley Rosser at May 31, 2008 5:06:16 PM
Aw someone said to public choice scholars tath ask why people vote. For the same reason they stand up to the Star Splanged Banner. It not every thing about money. Religious feeling is a legitimate one like any other
Posted by: karl at May 31, 2008 5:11:27 PM
Hodak is on point. The Church didn't have competition.
The Catholic Church (if you include the various monastic orders) owned more real estate than anybody in Europe. In an agrarian society, that means power. Wars were financed as well as cathedrals built.
Asking why they built Cathedrals frames the question in modern Christian terms and is irrelevant and silly.
Posted by: Bob Calder at May 31, 2008 5:12:53 PM
M. Hodak,
My understanding is that church and state were sometimes allies, sometimes rivals. The church was not dependent on the lord for funds. It had its own lands and revenues as well. So the nature of the financing is not so clear, at least to me. That might be my own limited knowledge of medieval history, of course.
Posted by: Bernard Yomtov at May 31, 2008 5:16:54 PM
This is another of those articles where Mr. Caplan and Cowen's analyses fail due to a skeptical bias that seems to have crossed into cynicism. Analysis might actually be a generous description given the errors
Consider this:"churches were a form of fiscal policy and the associated spending was a way to hand out goodies to political allies". Hundreds of years ago, the devotion of substantial amounts of labor and resouces meant diversion from the necessities of the day, agriculture and armies. If it was "policy", it wasn't very enlightened.
As for this assertion: "Churches may have been an efficient means to store wealth for other reasons as well. A church was neither efficient or effective at storing wealth-its construction was costly, it wasn't parcelable or portable and had no other uses than as a house of worship.
This is so badly written it makes readily defeasible assertion that advertising is a "rather effective way to build support for the status quo using aesthetics instead of argument". While advertising can support the "status quo" it is also a powerful method for upending the status quo.
I live in an area where the primary occupation was mining. The earnings were meager and due to a lack of education and religious and ethnic discrimination they had no opportunity for economic betterment.
The local church obtained gold for fixtures during its construction through the donation of jewelry. Such a donation represented a significant sacrifice for people who often had little or no other wealth, not even homes or land. Their motivation was strictly an expression of relgious faith. There was no rational economic motivation other than to erect a house of worship.
Posted by: Superheater at May 31, 2008 5:34:24 PM
Most medieval churches were not grand. Bryan is asking about cathedrals. Cathedrals were not merely big churches - they were communities for monks and clergy (dormitories, refractories), hospitality centers (hotels), and yes, power centers for the local archbishop.
Also - they usually did not start out as some great project. First there would be a small church that was gradually expanded over centuries. You have to look at the whole process, not just the end product.
Posted by: PJ at May 31, 2008 5:37:35 PM
I would argue that prior to sustained per capita economic growth, fascistic symbols of community greatness such as grand churches may have actually been welfare-improving. Although, interparish competition may have made this close to a zero sum game.
Posted by: josh at May 31, 2008 8:36:02 PM
Bah! 'Cathedral' derives from the Latin for 'throne' and therefore is a status symbol and does not mean people are necessarily more religious. A better sign of religious faith would be a church as they are a more simple and humble building and not particularly status-attracting.
Posted by: Gil at May 31, 2008 9:26:24 PM
Cathedrals were HQ's for one of the most important long distance activities of the age-pilgrimages. Without parsing the motives of the participants, from the point of view of bishops, monks, innkeepers, brothel owners and souvenir sellers this was a most important cash enterprise.
Posted by: Roland at May 31, 2008 11:07:44 PM
It's taken all the way to Roland's comment to point out the importance of cathedrals as tourist attractions. [see "Canterbury Tales"]
It was important to have a great relic. It was important to have beauty to see. It was important to have a nice set of music available.
Tourism -- and the accompanying multiplier in terms of trade -- wasn't as important then, of course, but it shouldn't be ignored, either.
Posted by: zbicyclist at May 31, 2008 11:38:52 PM
And bragging rights too. Regions and even the cities themselves were competing for claiming the biggest and greatest edifices and attributes. If it took ten years to build, there was time to revise and increase scope (put more money in) toward making the one that everyone would talk about at the end of the day. Upon completion it became the new standard set to dare others to try beating (you can read of their not infrequent collapses while under construction - while today it's the cranes)
Posted by: TomG at Jun 1, 2008 5:40:40 AM
To suggest that people in medieval Europe were no more religious than today is non-sensical.
How many people do you know who are burned at the stake for translating the bible into english? How many people do you know who walk thousands of miles across Europe on religious pilgrimages? How many of us believe that the Queen is god's representative on earth?
Comparing Notre Dame to Elle magazine while glibe fails to provide sufficient evidentiary data to support the conclusion that medieval people were less religious.
Posted by: Cassandra at Jun 1, 2008 6:53:41 AM
Much of the giving to the church, including funds for cathedrals, came in the form of indulgences. Yes, indulgences were nominally for God's forgivness as allocated by the church. But more realistically they were to secure the church's backing for political foray and even war. The church was the power back then given that secular power was so fragmented. Getting the power of the church on your side in any political situation meant quite a bit.
Posted by: Ed D. at Jun 1, 2008 8:00:38 AM
I can certainly see why Larry Iannacone presents his theories to economists rather than medieval historians, theologians or architectural historians. The knowledge of history and architecture can best be described as "marginal".
Expertise in one field of study does not qualify as a knowledge of all other fields of knowledge. There are a great many suppositions, conjectures, generalizations and personal speculations being offered as argumentation. Some of it is not too bad but generally, these posts lack specificity and detailed knowledge. How can one sum up a thousand years of history across an entire continent with a few sweeping generalizations?
There is more to medieval history and architecture than watching a few episodes of Brother Cadfael. As a history major, I have studied enough to understand the complexity of the subject under discussion and the bounds of my own ignorance.
Posted by: Cassandra at Jun 1, 2008 8:40:07 AM
"My understanding is that church and state were sometimes allies, sometimes rivals. The church was not dependent on the lord for funds. It had its own lands and revenues as well."
Bernard,
This is all technically true. But the allies/rivals distinction rarely transcended the degree to which they were partners. A good example of what happened when the partnership broke down completely was when Henry VIII decided he no longer needed the legitimacy conferred by the Catholic church. Henry promptly lost a good deal of his legitimacy, and the Church promptly lost a good deal of their lands. Henry decided that he had less to lose in that break, but he clearly would have preferred to do what he wanted to do (i.e., divorce Katherine) with the sanction of the Church.
My larger point, regarding overall religiosity noted in the post, made in various ways by other commenters, is that religious sentiment for organized religion is not what it used to be, but only because much of it (though not all) has migrated to other foci of worship, including the state. I would suggest that what animates Mugabe's supporters is not meaningfully different than the source of Pope Leo's support of Charlemagne.
Posted by: M. Hodak at Jun 1, 2008 11:33:48 AM
As Roland said, cathedrals were the Disneylands of yesteryear.
Note also that religions were the first transnational corporations - the McDonalds of the ancient world. You could travel to York or Istanbul, or anywhere in between, and be assured of a standard level of service and experience.
Posted by: gorobei at Jun 1, 2008 12:22:32 PM
Excellent post Cassandra. So let's get back to the more or less religious statement. Saying people were less religious than today ignores the effects of the separation of Philosophy and Church. Can I use Ockham in 1317 as an arbitrary start to that event? In the late 1400's the new humanist scholars began to attack poor medieval scholarship in theology. Subsequently (much later) the scientific revolution prized the ownership of the physical further away from religion.
In the meantime, how could people whose world view included the day-to-day interference of spirits in their lives NOT be under constant spiritual bombardment and thus sincerely religious?
Talk about signaling! Going to church and praying several times a day is the way one signals the spirits, ensuring survival. Of course there are the haircut, the hat, the clothing, the sacrifice, and the words all of which ensure prosperity. But remember that Christianity is built on intercession which means you NEED a priest so just being good won't save you. In England, tithing income to the church was about four percent of GDP compared to two percent of GDP for the government from taxes (Clark's Farewell to Alms) this is my imperfect recollection speaking though.
Perhaps the best modern day comparison the great cathedrals have is our attempts to communicate with extra-terrestrials in terms of signaling.
Contemporary structures exist in Mexico for instance, Tenochtitlan's Templo Mayor AD 1452 huge expansion project. I'm not suggesting this was for signaling aliens, just neighbors.
Posted by: Bob Calder at Jun 1, 2008 12:30:43 PM
For my part, I assume a constant level of religiosity for the same reasons economists assume that people are rational: to keep the maths simple.
Also, we have no way of objectively measuring something as vague and subjective as "religiosity" except through imperfect proxies, such as attendance at church. But people go to church for a bunch of reasons, some decidedly non-religious, etc etc
Posted by: enrique at Jun 1, 2008 2:07:54 PM
A few points: the middle ages lasted hundreds of years. Motivation for building cathedrals changed during that time, depending on circumstances and conditions, just as motivation for, say, the crusades changed as each crusade followed. To suggest a sole motivation is to suggest that the British taking over Iraq in the 1920s is the same as the US doing likewise today. Likewise as theology and doctrine developed so did motivation, especially as the concept of 'pardons' that could be purchased increased in the Roman Catholic Church. Take a single project, King's Chapel, Cambridge. It took around 150 years to build this huge Gothic cathedral. It was begun by Henry VI, a genuinely religious and pious if somewhat incompetent king, who wanted to build a holy institution. It was finished by Henry VIII, an egomaniac of vacillating religion, who split the English church from the Roman. From what we know of their characters, the two men had very different motivations: one God-focused, the other self-aggrandizement. Then - economically, to suggest the churches were a good place to store wealth does not make sense. If, as a king of a Roman Catholic countru, you poured your money into church building you LOST your money TO the church - which was controlled by the Papacy, predominantly. You could not access it and kings did not access it until, for example, Henry VIII split from the Roman church and decided all church lands were his. In addition, you could not sell a church and gain back all the money poured into the masonry. Indeed, churches were liable during an invasion to be sacked, burned and looted, struck by lightning or destroyed in earthquakes.
Churches were built for psychological reasons first and foremost, depending upon the originator of the church, and were more often than not as an act of penance. Andrew Carnegie did not create thousands of libraries to 'store his wealth' and likewise kings and rich merchants built churches not to store their wealth but for similar psychological urges as Carnegie experienced or Bill Gates does now. As for whether people were more or less religious, Eamon Duffy in 'Stripping of the Altars' has postulated reasonably that a similar percentage of people then as now were seriously interested/involved in religion as now. Relgiion shaped the lives of everyone in the same way as do politics and the media now, people followed it in the same way as they follow politics/media now, but those who craved intense religious/spiritual life were fewer as they are now. My own reading of medieval history and literature suggests this is a reasonable postulate.
Posted by: David at Jun 1, 2008 2:48:17 PM
How is a cathedral a form of savings in the Middle Ages? A home or property or other asset can be sold so it can be treated as savings for the individual.So maybe the parish church could be viewed as savings because it might be possible to sell it. But a cathedral? It can be a public works project, but savings?
But who are you going to sell the cathedral to? Does one bishop or cardinal sell his cathedral to another?
It has to about the most illiquid form of savings I have ever heard of.
Posted by: spencer at Jun 1, 2008 5:16:04 PM
Religions were the F500 corporations of their time. Churches were their headquarters. It's a way of CEOs/Priests peeing on their subjects and announcing their dominance to the world. Why? Because they can.
Posted by: Thomas at Jun 1, 2008 9:09:08 PM
I agree with those that propose that the reasons were primarily to do with power and control, and that power and control issues were an extraordinarily complex matter involving tensions between church and secular institutions. I think that Christopher Tyerman deals with this exceptionally well in 'God's Wars'.
I believe that power and control was exercised by symbolic intimidation linked to a mixture of sincerely and cynically fostered spiritualism.
I believe that in some, but not all, cases there was also an economic driver. For example note the disproportionately large churches and abbeys in small settlements on the pilgrim routes to Compostella (for example at Conques in Aveyron)
I think that everything else to do with the medieval churches as functional artefacts to serve these ends can best be understood in terms of mass illiteracy. We tend to forget that the great cathedrals we see today were, above all, hoardings on which to paint frescoes - the only effective means of communicating the religious stories and their social control messages to a mass audience other than by sermons - which also predominantly took place in churches - and which often consisted of telling the religious stories while using the frescoes as visual aids.
Ironically for me this is best illustrated not in the great cathedrals, but in the tiny village churches on the Spanish side of the Pyrenees. Noting that these villages were built on the frontier with Islamic Iberia, the purpose of the Romanesque frescoes in them are instantly recognisable to anyone who reads comics today.
Actually, if you want to see these for yourself, you have to go to Barcelona. Most of the originals were removed from their homes and moved to the Catalonia Museum in Barcelona, where they now live.
Posted by: Phillip Capper at Jun 1, 2008 10:03:27 PM
It seems like Americans have a hard time understanding exactly how unreligious Europeans have become.
Posted by: European at Jun 2, 2008 8:05:11 AM
Another argument in favor assuming a constant level of religiosity is this: while organized religion may be in decline in some parts of Europe, it is on the increase in the USA and the developing world. So in the end, by increasing one's sample size, it all washes out
Posted by: enrique at Jun 2, 2008 8:26:50 AM
The churches were built for the glory of God. Sorry, but that was a large part of the motivation.
Posted by: David Derrick at Jun 2, 2008 10:29:07 AM
If someone is going to plunder you on the run, they can wreck a church but they can't dissemble and carry away its value very easily.
This is incorrect. These aren't white-washed Protestant chapels, remember. They contain large amounts of portable valuable metals, rich cloth and expensive liturgical manuscripts which are every bit as much part of the church as the stones. Most importantly, they contain saints' relics. If you grab the gold, jewel-studded reliquary of the arm of St Catherine, for example, it's not the gold and jewels that are your biggest gain - it's the arm.
The relics are profit-making for the church as well because they attract pilgrims. The bigger your church, the more pilgrims you can accommodate and therefore fleece. So building a spectacular cathedral isn't just an expense - it's an investment.
Note that this doesn't require everyone to be very religious - just enough people with enough commitment. The best recent study of medieval religiosity is John Arnold's Belief and Unbelief in Medieval Europe (2005). It's very good indeed because it breaks down the idea of medieval religiosity and examines exactly what that would have meant in practice.
Posted by: Ovid at Jun 2, 2008 10:37:55 AM
I also agree with Ryan about the store of wealth idea. What could be more illiquid than a cathedral?
il-what? This is the middle ages we're talking about. Besides it gave rulers another excuse to go plunder some other country: they need more money to build a church.
Posted by: BlogReader at Jun 2, 2008 10:41:56 AM
It was always my assumption that the huge religious temples were built to keep the peasants in line. Go to church to be a good person - create a routine - don't break the laws of God, who coincidentally placed your king on his throne - don't break the King's law.
It's big and pretty because it does instate the power of the state over the people. It is an invitation to peasants to share in the wealth of the monarchy.
Posted by: Jerrold at Jun 2, 2008 11:26:38 AM
There are also biblical reasons for stone structures. Luke 19:35-40...
35
So they brought it to Jesus, threw their cloaks over the colt, and helped Jesus to mount.
36
As he rode along, the people were spreading their cloaks on the road;
37
and now as he was approaching the slope of the Mount of Olives, the whole multitude of his disciples began to praise God aloud with joy for all the mighty deeds they had seen.
38
They proclaimed: "Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord. 7 Peace in heaven and glory in the highest."
39
Some of the Pharisees in the crowd said to him, "Teacher, rebuke your disciples." 8
40
He said in reply, "I tell you, if they keep silent, the stones will cry out!"
Posted by: Joe Marier at Jun 2, 2008 11:44:47 AM
"Marginal revolution" is about economics. I have yet to read in any of these comments anything about the "economics" of cathedral building that tells me what cathedrals were "worth." In modern cities -- even medieval cities -- we can postulate the worth of real estate in simple value terms, such as lease rental obtained or (in the case of governments and corporations) lease rental avoided. There are, of course, special purpose buildings (24 hour gyms, sports arenas, or Best Buys or Wal Marts) that earn income based on attracting clientele to what is sold inside. Looking at cathedrals from this perspective, what was their earning power? Did cathedrals attract a body of worshipers or pilgrims that paid sufficient alms so that cathedrals were, in fact, a money-making proposition? You would think that if cathedrals didn't make ANY economic sense, that the vast sums poured into their construction over time would finally cease, much as the useless Japanese public works projects have ceased and our own USA $250MM "bridge to nowhere" in Alaska was finally voted down. Can someone kindly posit an answer to the economic question (as if we were there at the time), "what are cathedral worth?"
Posted by: HG Moore at Jun 2, 2008 12:09:26 PM
If someone is going to plunder you on the run, they can wreck a church but they can't dissemble and carry away its value very easily.
Actually centralizing the loot makes it very easy for marauding barbarians. They just have to destroy that one church and voila! they get the state treasury.
In India, the temples were and some still are, a repository of amazing wealth. And the temple towns were attacked repeatedly by Afghans and Persians--google Mahmud of Ghazni.
Posted by: gs at Jun 2, 2008 12:12:43 PM
The reason for cathedrals being everywhere, at least in England, was completely status driven: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cities_of_the_United_Kingdom
Posted by: DaveC at Jun 2, 2008 12:35:04 PM
Good post! --for its question, not for the answers.
Churches are a very very inefficient way to reward clients. Why not give them cash? Or at least give them houses they can live in?
The great mystery is why so many cathedrals and village churches were built of stone when the houses of the rich people were not, till, I think, the 1500s or so. (Castles I will except, but they were for defense more than for housing).
We can add the puzzle as to why monasteries were so wealthy and built such grand stone buildings.
For churches, I think the answer is a combination of religious feeling and local patriotism. Nowadays universities have grand buildings built from gifts; in medieval times, religion was what was valued.
Posted by: Eric Rasmusen at Jun 2, 2008 12:40:15 PM
Ovid, Cassandra and Ed D are correct. Also, the person who stated that the churches were built (generally) in stages was also absolutely correct. So, a church you see now, probably had the walls and stained glass windows when it was first allegedly "complete" then guilded alterscreens with paintings during the Renaissance, then guilded seats, dramatic representational paintings and buckets of gold during the Baroque era.
This article is so theoretical and abstract. Honestly, one must really address each cathedral individually as each one has such a distinct history. St. Peter's, Hagia Sophia, any Northern European Cathedral--each one has such a distinct history.
That which was not paid for by indulgences, gifts, or other money, was constructed using labor in the form of "taxes." So, being that the peon didn't have actual gold or silver or extra pigs or horses and did not own land to give as payment for taxes, the peon had to pay with his labor. Much of the foundations and basic parts of those old cathedrals were built primarily with local "tax" labor or "tax" item type payments while craftsmen carved the cool stuff or made the religious windows (sometimes in other nations or as tranplanted labor imported from other regions and nations) and got paid for it.
Furthermore, the walls had to be several feet thick to support such tall walls. Additionally, theft and Crusades (raids) of the far east and the Americas during the very late Medieval period and the early Renaissance made much of the later ostentatious artwork possible.
Posted by: Art Historian at Jun 2, 2008 12:43:58 PM
To sum up my not-an-economist opinion, it is silly and polarizing to ask which times or people were more religious. All we have are the buildings, which are as changing and dynamic as society. Yes, the buildings are a microcosm of their times, just as the web tells us about the spider that made it. However, the buildings have changed so much over time, because the people who used them changed and we did/do not not have the same circumstances in the USA as the Europeans did/do.
Posted by: Art Historian at Jun 2, 2008 12:47:30 PM
A lot of cathedrals were built with money from newly rich merchants. Those merchants were held in low esteem by society and the church taught for centuries that most of them were going to hell for their sins committed as merchants. Plunder from warfare and kidnapping for ransom were held in much higher esteem as means to great wealth. As a result, many wealthy merchants would contribute to a new cathedral for several reasons: 1) to earn respect in the community 2) to cover sins committed as merchants and gain favor with God 3) to buy a position in the church for a relative because the church had political power that could protect merchants from seizure of their wealth by the nobility.
Posted by: fundamentalist at Jun 2, 2008 1:29:47 PM
Yes, I agree with Fundamentalist on his/her 3 points. So true.
Posted by: Art Historian at Jun 2, 2008 1:46:30 PM
Good post, art historian.
I think we have great difficulty understanding a far more decentralized society. We think in terms of nations, and centralized governments. It is in fact difficult to imagine the regionality of medieval Europe or appreciate the complexity of Gothic architecture. Architecturally British gothic is completely different from French gothic and within Britain one has tremendous regional variation. Concur with your point is well taken that cathedrals should be considered individually.
An interesting example that helps to underscore the difference from our modern sensibilities is the cathedral in Southwell, Nottingham built 900 years ago. The cathedral is still surrounded by 13 pubs quite literally it was the centre of life in the community. Many medieval churches had markets built against their walls.
Today, we preserve these monuments isolated from their surroundings in a way that they were not during the middle ages. We think of these places as proscriptive, domineering and oppressive. Someone has compared the frescoes to cartoons without acknowledging that the art was necessary to communicate bible stories because the service was conducted entirely in a foreign language, latin. It was not until Henry VIII that the official bible was translated into English. Even up to that point, anyone translating the bible into English was crucified for heresy. We also forget the irreverance of celebrations like the Feast of Fools where subordinates elected a mock bishops and made fun of their superiors.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feast_of_Fools
Like any subject, we create simplified models to understand complex subjects like T-charts to teach accounting or supply & demand curves to teach the dynamics of markets. Our worldview and experiences shape our perceptions. There have been some excellent posts here that are interesting in our attempts to understand a society so remote from our modern existence.
Posted by: Cassandra at Jun 2, 2008 1:58:41 PM
enrique,
The minute you admit that religiosity can decline in one area (say, Europe),
you have given up the game. Why should there be some offsetting increase
necessarily somewhere else when it goes down in one location? Is this
something ordained by God?
Posted by: Barkley Rosser at Jun 2, 2008 2:17:39 PM
The other thing to factor into the equation is that you can't choose not to have a cathedral. A diocese was (and is) a legally constituted territory and required a physical centre from which the bishop could rule. That bishop had important liturgical functions, including ordaining priests and blessing the chrism, which could only be carried out in his church. So it wasn't as if the bishop could simply decide to tear down a big cathedral if it turned out to be uneconomical.
(And that's even assuming he could foresee that it would be uneconomical, given bishops rarely ruled for more than a couple of decades and the cathedrals sometimes took centuries to complete. As someone pointed out earlier, they were built in stages - so it's not really a question of whether the cathedral as a whole was economical, but whether each stage was economical from the point of view of the then bishop. This is impossible to ascertain in detail since we just don't have the data, but projects were delayed or scaled down because of lack of funds.)
As for H. G. Moore's question of an uneconomical enterprise ceasing, they did cease being built (although not renovated), although I suspect it was more a case of Obelix's menhir problem than losing money: so long as your cathedral stayed up, you didn't need a new one.
Abbeys are a whole different question again, though. There is some question of the Cluniac order running into financial trouble in the twelfth century because of overspending in building and poor business decisions.
Posted by: Ovid at Jun 2, 2008 3:10:04 PM
Ovid,
Would agree with your assessment that churches were built over centuries starting & stopping as funds permitted. The purpose of the cathedral was not revenue generation but as a spiritual centre.
The fact that we keep thinking in terms of the rational (economics) to explain the irrational (spiritual) reflects the growing secularization of our society. We do not see god's presence in our every day existence nor do we consider places and objects to be sacred. The bible is no longer a jewel incrusted book but just another paperback. Hence we find it difficult to comprehend why anyone would build a cathedral nor what force they could have employed to force others to do so. The notion that communities constructed cathedrals voluntarily working from one generation to the next seems incomprehensible.
Can you think of any activity that parallels this in modern society aside from the most mundane like making pancakes on Saturday with the kids? As a society, we do not build for permanence anymore than we plant trees in anticipation of their maturity 200 years from now as George Washington did. Even our idea of religion has become individualized due to the reformation. The late Pope John Paul reflected this personalization of religion which would have been heretical in the catholic church of the middle ages.
Posted by: Cassandra at Jun 2, 2008 4:06:19 PM
Well, this has been an interesting and enlightening conversation. Thanks to everyone for sharing.
It would be great to see an economist's interpretation of a particular cathedral's history.
Posted by: Art Historian at Jun 2, 2008 4:54:21 PM
We do not see god's presence in our every day existence nor do we consider places and objects to be sacred. ... Hence we find it difficult to comprehend why anyone would build a cathedral nor what force they could have employed to force others to do so. The notion that communities constructed cathedrals voluntarily working from one generation to the next seems incomprehensible.
Well, I'm suspicious of the spirituality explanation because it pushes the explanation into the black box of people's minds. We don't really know what these people felt, other than a lot of different people felt a lot of different things at different times. Virtually all our evidence before the fourteenth century is ecclesiastical and even there you get references to heterodoxy and even straight-up unbelief. (I've come across references to atheists as early as the eleventh century - both cases were stories of how they were struck down by saints for their unbelief, but the fact that the church scribe felt the need to deal with the issue is pretty telling.) There's even more evidence of general suspicion of the Church. So, even if we assume that the vast majority of people believed something, you can't assume that they believed what they were being told. They had their own ideas about Christ, the saints and the Church that claimed to know more than they did. And all that's before you touch on the issue of self-conscious heresy, which is an entirely different can of worms.
I'd favour a more social explanation. These were the centres of their respective cities. It was where you met people (medieval sermons are constantly denouncing people who talk in church), traded, sheltered from the rain etc. Religious festivals around the cathedral constituted huge parties for the profane as well as spiritual experiences for the pious. It wasn't just pilgrims who flocked to cathedral cities, but also the people making a living from selling the pilgrims board, lodging and souvenir tat. If people bought into the cathedral as a meeting place and communal centre, then that explains its appeal without needing to assume that everyone was religious in the same way or using it for the same purpose.
As for how the cathedrals got built - ordinary people didn't, in fact, always contribute voluntarily. The bishop had his tax- and tithe-collectors and the knights to make sure you paid up.
Posted by: Ovid at Jun 2, 2008 5:45:20 PM
Ovid,
You raise many interesting points. Must admit to being intrigued by the 11th century sources that you cite regarding atheism and I cannot but agree that one enters a black box regarding the spirituality argument. How can one presume to know how they thought or what they found important during a period of 1000 years. When comparisons are made to comics, advertising, and tourism, one does however feel that such comparisons are equally spurious. Unfortunately, all too often our impressions are gleaned from secondary rather than primary sources implying a filter of personal bias. Agree that that even the primary sources are limited.
We likely know more about the residents of Deir el Medina in ancient Eygpt or Pompeii.
Posted by: Cassandra at Jun 2, 2008 7:45:44 PM
This question is like a Rorschach inkblot test. The answer say more about the person answering than it does about why medievals built cathedrals.
Posted by: Cure of Ars at Jun 2, 2008 7:56:49 PM
Although we would like to think otherwise, is it not the case with most questions. Do we not reveal more of ourselves than we learn?
Posted by: Cassandra at Jun 2, 2008 10:02:45 PM
