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

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The interior of the Abbey Church of St-Denis, just outside Paris. It was here, during renovation work from 1137, that already existing elements of what we now call Gothic – including the pointed arches and ribbed vaulting shown here – were brought together as a ‘unified whole’. An impeccable guide to the golden age of ecclesiastical architecture... Meticulously researched... It's to Wells's credit that she manages to make the history of these cathedrals as gripping as she does. * The Times * The nave of Wells Cathedral, with one of the strainer arches – and their apertures resembling owl eyes – installed by William Joy at the central tower. PHOTO: Emma Wells. A glorious illustrated history of twenty of the world’s greatest cathedrals, interwoven with the extraordinary stories of the people who built them. Heaven on Earth covers an entire millennium of cathedral-building from c. AD 500 to the sixteenth century. The central core of Emma Wells’s book focuses on the explosion of ecclesial construction that began with the emergence of the Gothic style in twelfth-century France, which produced such remarkable structures as the cathedrals of Notre-Dame, Canterbury, Chartres, Salisbury, St Mark’s Basilica in Venice and the Sainte-Chapelle in Paris. From Constantinople’s Hagia Sophia to London’s Westminster Abbey, from Florence’s Duomo to St Basil’s in Moscow, Emma Wells tells the story of the feats of engineering that brought twenty great cathedrals into being. 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. Together, they reveal how 1000 years of cathedral-building shaped modern Europe, and influenced art, culture and society around the world. Heaven on Earth: The Lives and Legacies of the World’s Greatest Cathedrals by Emma J. Wells – eBook Details Wells is also the writer and presenter of the three-part series, St Cuthbert’s Way, which premiered on Viral History's YouTube channel in 2018. [30] Publications [ edit ] Books [ edit ]

More was to come. The ‘French work’ was no longer an architectural prodigy, because across Christendom a great number of new Gothic churches was rising from the scaffolding of its army of builders. It infiltrated Norman and native building styles to produce an ‘English’ variation; and then it spread across Europe, pushing the limits of technology and experimentation, as medieval masons were far from resistant to stylistic borrowings and intermingling as they travelled around from project to project. A glorious illustrated history of twenty of the world's greatest cathedrals, interwoven with the extraordinary stories of the people who built them. The rebuilding of Canterbury Cathedral following the fire of 1174 is a project we can still experience today. Over a million people from across the globe are welcomed through the doors at Canterbury every year. But this is just one story. Emma J. Wells has written an accessible, authoritative and lavishly illustrated account of the building of 16 of ‘the world’s greatest cathedrals… The book gives full weight to the wealth of legends associated with cathedrals.

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their intelligence – this makes a huge difference for a speaker. In the Oxford audience I encountered many experts in the field my book covered and even one of the ambassadors I’d quoted Every literary festival stays in an author’s mind for slightly individual reasons. I shall remember the Oxford festival for:I soon felt that this cathedral was, somehow, mine. It was an odd sense of ownership, given that my stint in Cambridge was only a year long, and that Catholic worship had ceased there some 500 years earlier. But perhaps this is, after all, the point of cathedrals. Embedded in the local, they point to the universal and remind us that the communion of the Church is not a series of local franchises of a larger corporation, but living (and hopefully lively) communities of the faithful, sharing in the communion of the wider Church.

Shines scholarly light on the history of the great cathedrals of Europe and uncovers the wealth of human stories they hold. Rich in animated, erudite and compassionate storytelling about how people in the past expressed spirituality in magnificent physical form... An epic ode to some of our most beautiful and beloved buildings. -- Helen Carr Emma Jane Wells, FSA (born 1986) is an English church historian, academic, author, and broadcaster, specialising in the ecclesiastical and architectural history of the late medieval and early modern age. She is currently a lecturer in Ecclesiastical and Architectural History at the University of York. [1] Wells is a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London (FSA), [2] a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy and a founding member of the Centre for Parish Church Studies (CPCS). [3] [4] Chartres was also renovated after a fire in 1134, with a new great western entrance flanked by two square towers (shown here). Flying buttresses that allowed the cathedral to reach soaring heights are visible along the outside wall on the left. Janet Gough is a writer and lecturer on cathedrals and church buildings. Her latest book is Cathedral Treasures of England and Wales: Deans’ Choice (Scala, 2022). The creation of the Gothic style in twelfth-century France proclaimed the dawning of a new era which swept across Europe during the later middle ages. An enterprise of ‘cathedral makers’, sustained by kings, chapters, abbots and nobles of European high society, mobilised an expansive programme of building in a quest to literally build Heaven on Earth. Throughout Christendom, these magnificent skyscrapers of glass and stone began to dominate the landscape of many cities, towns and even the smallest of villages.Andrew Lownie Literary Agency | Emma Wells's book on world's greatest cathedrals sold to Head of Zeus". Andrew Lownie Literary Agency.

Wells grew up in North Yorkshire, on the fringes of the Yorkshire Dales, where her grandmother instilled a passion for medieval architecture. [7] She attended a Church of England primary school before being educated at St Francis Xavier (Roman Catholic) School in Richmond and the University of York, where she read Art History and Buildings Archaeology. She was awarded her Doctorate from Durham University in 2013 with a thesis entitled "An Archaeology of Sensory Experience: Pilgrimage in the Medieval Church c.1170–c.1550". [8] Career [ edit ] Wells, Emma J. (2016). Pilgrim Routes of the British Isles. London: Robert Hale. ISBN 978-0719817076 Between 2018 and 2021, Wells was appointed a Research Associate of the Department for Archaeology at the University of York. In September 2021, she was appointed as Research Fellow of the Department for Archaeology at Durham University. She was promoted to Lecturer in Ecclesiastical and Architectural History at the University of York in 2019. [3]Saunders, Tristram Fane (8 March 2019). "Period drama's professional pedants: what do historical advisers actually do?". The Telegraph– via www.telegraph.co.uk. Combining scholarship and an eye for human stories, Heaven on Earth is a vivid, colourful and absorbing tour of the greatest buildings the medieval world produced. -- Dan Jones Emma J. Wells has written an accessible, authoritative and lavishly illustrated account of the building of 16 of the world's greatest cathedrals * Spectator * These places set in stone that curious paradox of Catholicism: the scandal of particularity; the universal mission of the Catholic Church. In Heaven on Earth Emma J Wells certainly captures the particularity of these cathedrals, and her book is filled with tales of local patrons, craftsmen and the wider politics of the kingdoms in which these cathedrals were built. The buildings themselves narrate the messy realities of the more political life of the Church: the competition between abbeys; different cathedrals vying to become the seat of the archbishop; fights over relics or privileges. Wells, Emma J. (2022). Heaven On Earth: The Lives & Legacies of the World’s Greatest Cathedrals. London: Head of Zeus. ISBN 978-1788541947