ARCH 4843 / ARHS 4983 / HIST 3983 / HUMN 3923H / ARCH 4023H
Dr. Sexton ● Spring 2011
Medieval Architecture
Discussion Questions 4/11/11
Graded discussion on:
Erwin Panofsky, Gothic Architecture and Scholasticism (New York: Meridian Books,
1957), 35-88. PDF
Panofsky’s thesis in this book was that the “controlling principles” and methods of procedure of
Scholasticism were assimilated as “mental habits” by the architects and expressed by them in
building.
Some translations of untranslated terms:
manifestatio (Latin) – elucidation or clarification – usually put on the highest plane as the elucidation of faith by reason
singulariter voluti (Latin) – independently vaulted arches – ribs standing before webbing was laid in, instead of ribs and
webbing being constructed simultaneously.
l’art pour l’art (Fr.) – art for art’s sake
nam sensus ratio quaedem est (Latin) – the sense faculty being a sort of proportion itself.
concordantia (Latin) – reconciliation, agreeing, putting in accord – a pattern for considering problems in relationship to
conflicting authority of the past. A questions (quaestio) is posed, followed by one authority, then
another, and a final resolution (the videtur quod, sed contra, respondeo dicendum; see below)
Sic et Non (Latin) – Yes and No, title of Scholastic text written by French philosopher and theologian Pierre Abelard
auctoritas (Latin) – authority
videtur quod, sed contra, respondeo dicendum – the Scholastic structure of argument translated as “it is seen that,” “but
on the contrary,” “I answer saying that.”
In chapter IV, Panofsky sets out to show how well Gothic great churches evidence the first
controlling principle of Scholasticism: manifestatio (elucidation or clarification) as seen in the three
requirements of writing a classic Summa (Panofsky 31):
1. Totality (sufficient enumeration)
2. Arrangement according to a system of homologous parts and parts of parts (sufficient
articulation)
3. Distinctness and deductive cogency (sufficient interrelation)
1. How do we moderns know that the 13th-century passion for clarification (the principle of
manifestatio or showing) was not a drafting room obsession that affected architecture but a
manifestation of a widespread mental habit (habitus, mentality)?
2. In class we described the suppression of galleries, towers, and radiating chapels in Gothic great
churches as evidence toward striving toward spatial unity (Jean Bony’s idea), how does Panofsky
see these changes?
3. The second requirement of Scholastic writing is a homologous arrangement of parts and parts of
parts, meaning that a lot of parts have to share the same relative position or structure, which will
result in a clear hierarchy of levels. How does a Gothic church exemplify this principle but not a
Romanesque one?
4. Why don’t Late Gothic churches fit Panofksy’s architectural analogy to Scholasticism?
5. How does Panofsky’s Scholastic argument help resolve the impasse between a purely structure
approach (which he attacked earlier in his symbolic interpretation of Suger’s choir of St.-Denis)
and anti-structural positions such as that of French architect Hippolyte “Pol” Abraham, who
argued that Gothic ribs were illusionistic, not structural (having been a soldier in WWI, seeing
half-destroyed Gothic buildings)?
over →
6. What is the difference between the humanistic mind (read Renaissance mind preferring classical
architecture) and the Scholastic mind (high medieval
In chapter V, Panofsky transfers the Scholastic goal of concordantia (reconciliation) from argument
building to cathedral building.
7. If Gothic architecture is supposed to be an expression of a mentality that insisted on clarification
for clarification’s sake, how does Panofsky account for the fact that there were so many
confusing and contradictory trends leading from Early Gothic (Laon, Sens Cathedral, NotreDame) into High Gothic (Bourges, Chartres)?
8. Why are rose windows not found in Anglo-Norman churches but they are found in French and
Italian architecture?
9. Why do so many Gothic church interiors hold on to the horizontality of triforium when the rest
of the nave elevation emphasizes the vertical? Where and how is the Sic (Yes) of the horizontal
triforium reconciled with the Non (No) of the negation of idea of the triforium at Amiens?
(Pierre de Montereau’s St.-Denis solution would be the final respondeo dicendum for the
quaestio of the triforium).
10. In concluding, how does Panofsky answer the criticism he anticipates that theories are fanciful?