Heaven on Earth: The Lives and Legacies of the World's Greatest Cathedrals

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Rich in animated, erudite and compassionate storytelling about how people in the past expressed spirituality in magnificent physical form. Wells, a historian, broadcaster and author of Heaven on Earth: The Lives and Legacies of the World’s Greatest Cathedrals. Santiago de Compostela was built on the site of the supposed tomb of St James, martyred in c44; Notre-Dame de Saint-Denis stands where the third-century missionary-martyr Saint Dionysius finally fell after his beheading on Montmartre.

We use Google Analytics to see what pages are most visited, and where in the world visitors are visiting from. Wells is an ecclesiastical and architectural historian, and in some passages the lure of architectural exposition impedes an otherwise lucid and absorbing narrative. The emergence of the Gothic style in twelfth-century France, characterized by pointed arches, rib vaults, flying buttresses and large windows, forms the central core of Emma Wells’s authoritative but accessible study of the golden age of the cathedral. As Emma tells us in this episode, her interest in cathedrals was sparked while she was studying history of art at university, where she became fascinated by “the elements of ecclesiastical buildings that you wouldn’t know were there unless you studied them”.Transporting the reader from the chaotic atmosphere of the masons’ yard to the cloisters of power, each chapter is a journey of exploration through a different cathedral. Not only was Becket one of the most celebrated martyrs and saints in England, but Canterbury was also, in Emma’s words, a “veritable monastic theme park”. Scene Two: Salisbury, the ceremonial laying of the first five foundation stones of the new cathedral after its move from Old Sarum.

More than architectural biographies, these are human stories of triumph and tragedy that take the reader from the chaotic atmosphere of the mason's yard to the cloisters of power. Cathedrals weren’t merely places where God’s grace could be found, they were places where it happened.Scene Three: Chartres, France, William me Breton described the growing cathedral’s vaults as bringing to ‘look like the shell of a tortoise’ referring to the higher vaults and a longer and wider nave than any other in Christendom. Walking around a cathedral today can be a solemn and an awe-inspiring experience, but what if we could stand inside the same building and travel back 800 years or so? Thanks to the expertise and insight Emma provides in this episode, we are also able to uncover some of the secrets and stories of these beautiful buildings that might otherwise pass us by.

More than architectural biographies, these are human stories of triumph and tragedy that take the reader from the chaotic atmosphere of the mason’s yard to the cloisters of power. It is this remarkable flowering of ecclesiastical architecture that forms the central core of Emma Wells's authoritative but accessible study of the golden age of the cathedral. Authorities were always alert to small tweaks to their offer that could grow their revenues: at Reims, the cranium of St Nicasius was translated to a new shrine simply to create an additional station at which pilgrims could make offerings.We are experiencing delays with deliveries to many countries, but in most cases local services have now resumed. Thanks to meticulous planning and generous patronage, the new cathedral is built efficiently and incredibly quickly, and becomes one of the leading examples of the English gothic style. His poems have been published by Reliquiae, Bad Lilies, The Interpreter’s House, and Under the Radar, among others. But, as with any marketing campaign, consumer enthusiasm wasn’t a given: in October 1247 Henry III walked barefoot from St Paul’s to Westminster to promote the latter’s acquisition of some holy blood from the wound of Christ, but neither the stunt nor the relic fired the public imagination. It takes in their cultural landscapes, the physical settings, as well as the personal stories, relationships and tragedies that marked each architectural revolution, from the largest gothic cathedral in Northern Europe, York Minster of England, where countless disasters (deliberate, accidental and foolish) wreaked havoc on its fabric, to the Hagia Sophia of modern-day Turkey in the south, an iconic landmark in which are entwined the legacies of medieval Christianity, the Ottoman Empire, resurgent Islam and secular societies.

Prefacing her account with the construction in the sixth century of the Hagia Sophia, the remarkable Christian cathedral of the eastern Roman empire, she goes on to chart the construction of a glittering sequence of iconic structures, including Saint-Denis, Notre-Dame, Canterbury, Chartres, Salisbury, York Minster and Florence's Duomo. It has the sometimes supplicant, sometimes competitive, sometimes accommodating relationship with state power that was required to build something on this scale and at this expense. Pilgrims traveled from far and wide to visit Becket’s new “super-shrine” as well as several other shrines to saints' relics besides.Heaven On Earth – an illuminating narrative of the conception and legacies of sixteen of the world’s greatest cathedrals – is interwoven with an exploration of the lives, legends and scandals of the people who built them – both up on the pinnacles and down in the crypts. Scene One: Canterbury cathedral, trinity chapel, the scene of St Thomas Becket’s elevation and translation into his new shrine. Finally, we cross the channel to visit Chartres Cathedral, a masterpiece of the French gothic style.