enturies this form of Gothic architecture was the
highest expression of the sincere feeling for art which inspired the
whole northern continent. From a previous chapter, you will remember how
the people of the late Middle Ages lived. Unless they were peasants and
dwelt in villages, they were citizens of a "city" or "civitas," the old
Latin name for a tribe. And indeed, behind their high walls and their
deep moats, these good burghers were true tribesmen who shared the
common dangers and enjoyed the common safety and prosperity which they
derived from their system of mutual protection.

In the old Greek and Roman cities the market-place, where the temple
stood, had been the centre of civic life. During the Middle Ages, the
Church, the House of God, became such a centre. We modern Protestant
people, who go to our church only once a week, and then for a few hours
only, hardly know what a mediaeval church meant to the community. Then,
before you were a week old, you were taken to the Church to be baptised.
As a child, you visited the Church to learn the holy stories of the
Scriptures. Later on you became a member of the congregation, and if you
were rich enough you built yourself a separate little chapel sacred to
the memory of the Patron Saint of your own family. As for the sacred
edifice, it was open at all hours of the day and many of the night. In
a certain sense it resembled a modern club, dedicated to all the
inhabitants of the town. In the church you very likely caught a first
glimpse of the girl who was to become your bride at a great ceremony
before the High Altar. And finally, when the end of the journey had
come, you were buried beneath the stones of this familiar building, that
all your children and their grandchildren might pass over your grave
until the Day of Judgement.

Because the Church was not only the House of God but also the true
centre of all common life, the building had to be different from
anything that had ever been constructed by the hands of man. The temples
of the Egyptians and the Greeks and the Romans had been merely the
shrine of a local divinity. As no sermons were preached before the
images of Osiris or Zeus or Jupiter, it was not necessary that
the interior offer space for a great multitude. All the religious
processions of the old Mediterranean peoples took place in the open.
But in the north, where the weather was usually bad, most functions were
held under the roof of the church.

D