A gothic cathedral is both an incredible work of art and also the work of hundreds or thousands of hands over decades and centuries - you are looking not just at the final product, but at the love and commitment it took to make that work of art, the long-term dedication and belief that it should exist even if we don’t live to see it exist. You’re looking at an expression of love not just for God and for art and beauty, but for future generations and people we’ll never know. The time and effort isn’t an unfortunate part of the process, it’s intrinsic to what we feel when we witness the cathedral - a connection to others, reaching both ways.
I understand why the monks have developed this technique, and I don’t disagree with them - the act of building a gothic cathedral is outside the capacity of modern society. I’ll never begrudge someone a hack to preserve some beauty in this machine we’ve created. But I can’t help but feel like they’ve created a facsimile of a cathedral - they’ve created the palace at Disneyland, not Notre Dame.
Perhaps a few dead bodies and a couple hundred years of recitations will do the trick?
Put another way, if monks in the year 1k had a CNC router like this, they wouldn’t have peasants take 50 years to arrive at their expression to God.
It’s the architecture and the design that reflects the Lord almighty. The peasants doing it are a means to an end: so the church stands tall, so they can massacre the non-believers, burn witches, infidels, and imprison astronomers. All in the comfort of a beautiful cathedral.
And, to your point, yes, if the monks followed the construction with a hundred years of prayer and sacrifice to consecrate the building, indeed the building would carry a more powerful emotional resonance than it does now. The sacrifice is the point, the effort is the point. It’s an act of devotion, not just one of construction.
I realize most folks here have a different world view; but in the end, this building has no point whatsoever apart from how the monks see it.
And - “this building has no point whatsoever apart from how the monks see it” is true for everything and every viewpoint.
If we want to protect historic buildings for generations to enjoy then we're going to need to be more pragmatic.
I have come to the conclusion that if it is worth protecting you can see it in tourist numbers - people who go out of their way to look at something.
I suppose things like the Svalbard seed vault are similar secular efforts, as is the Long Now’s clock, although that feels somewhat more self-indulgent than these others. I’m interested in others, if you can think of them.
Started in 1907, finished in 1990. I don't love it as much as Sagrada Familia, but it is a pretty bona fide classic cathedral.
No, we prefer to spend all our time/energy/money on lesser things.
I’m not being facetious with these questions, nor am I making an accusation - I think it’s a genuinely interesting question for the modern world, and it’s what I’m circling around here more than the notion of glorying god: the cathedral was a gift to the humans of future generations, one whose sacrifice indicated the value its makers placed on the wellbeing of its recipients. How do you think of your actions in that light? Do you?
It's not an accident that the architecture of the Canadian National Gallery explicitly references Christian church architecture.
Or the Smithsonian. Or the NASA museum at Cape Canaveral. Also cathedrals.
Walking the entire length of a Saturn V rocket laid on its side at the NASA museum at Cape Canaveral is as close to a holy moment as this old atheist has ever experienced.
Which means there needs to be a balance - looks nice enough for today, but don't think for a moment it will meet the needs of the future so it needs to be easy to replace as well.
Regarding houses - American architecture starting around the 40s divorced itself from its locale, but a great deal of older houses were built to be long-term dwellings, and this is reflected in their architecture, where they sit, how the wind and sun move across the structure, the materials they use, etc in a way that still generates value today. They may be harder to run a CAT5 through, but they’re a hell of a lot easier to keep cool in the summer.
do you know that (a) the designers of those cathedrals actually thought that? (b) the the people who built those cathedreals actually thought that?
You could at least compare to Notre Dame. It’s a bit tone deaf to draw comparison to Versailles, which was a vanity project to glorify the French monarchy.
Even with the CNC machines, this is still a multi-decade endeavor that will span generations because the number of monks (and outside support) is small and not getting larger. They've scaled down the work required to match their capabilities, and still creating something that will last centuries. Relative to their community, it's still a cathedral effort.
love it
https://www.ocarm.org/en/item/4545-st-john-of-the-cross-myst...
It may seem from our perspective that monasteries are full of prayer and spiritual endeavors, but they are also the site of a large amount of manual labor and highly-educated expertise that can be brought to bear on large projects like this.