It looks like you've found some good sources of information. Are you fairly clear on buttresses and vaults?

The flying buttresses (as contrasted with just plain buttresses) are those spider-leg looking structures that reach from the outside wall of the outer aisle up and all the way to where the roof meets the outer walls of the main aisle. All this goes on outside the church. The flying buttresses transfer much of the weight of the roof away from the church walls.

Vaults are ceilings created by repeating arch forms. Ribbed vaults, when you look up, make the vaults look like they have ribs. Kind of like a round molding running along every contour of the arched ceiling. Now, that I've either cleared things up for you or made you laugh -- hoping one or the other, J.

Yes, I do know what a flying buttress is now. At least now I can look at Notre Dame and not think, "Oh, these people have a lot of time on their hands. They've created this monstrous, complex building with a lot of weird stuff sticking out."

And yes, I've a fairly good idea as to what a rib vault is as well.

Now I can probably even step into a cathedral and tell whether it's Romanesque or Gothic. :-)

Actually it's interesting thinking about skyscrapers in this context. They'd probably never have been possible without reinforced concrete, etc. -- all these windows that seem so commonplace now.

It gives you a sense of respect for what people did about 1000 years ago. And all they wanted was more light and more windows (in a way).

It is said that the bishops each wanted their cathedral to be "heaven on earth", and the colored light flooding those huge interior spaces surely is that. By the way, have you ever seen the video called "Cathedral"? It's one of four in a set, years ago it was broadcast on PBS. (Pyramid, and Castle are two of the others.) A combination of animated story and on-site instruction. I use it with my students sometimes. J.

No, I've not seen it.

Unfortunately www.learner.org doesn't seem to have it either (I typed Cathedral into the search box).

I'm really pleased that I found Art of the Western World there -- I've never seen this series, and now I want to try to see what they've to say in the other episodes.

Maybe the book you remember cmt is Pillars of the Earth, a fictional, historical account about the building of a cathedral. Brunelleschi's dome, about the design and construction of Florence's Duomo is a great, entertaining, non-fiction that reads like a novel. It really is amazing not only the quality of the architecture, but the quality of the rough labor that went into actually putting these buildings together. The fit between stones is a wonder to look at.

Another excellent novel about the building of a cathedral is William Golding's ("Lord of the Flies")"The Spire."

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg...8&v=glance

I don't know if this link will help. It's from PBS videos, David McCaughley (based on his illustrated books.) J.

By the way, I just found out that Wikipedia has some nice links. Should have thought of using it much earlier.

Here's an example:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cathedral_architecture