Thursday, February 26, 2009

St.Augustine and Gothic Architecture


Not to brag or anything but I’ve actually but I’ve actually been lucky enough to visit a Gothic Cathedral. While staying in Vienna, Austria for 4 months as a refugee we spent a lot of time visiting beautiful landscape, riding trains, and not eating Mc Donald’s cause of the "Mad Cow Disease". Now it turns out that we were just too poor to afford the awesome big Mac so our parents led us to think other wise by blowing up the mad cow disease in my head... I can still hear the cows laughing today.

St. Stephen's Cathedral in Vienna is what my family and I used to visit on a weakly basis so I’ve actually seen the amazing architecture used in building this cathedral first hand...

Let's get back to topic!!!!

St.Augustine had a very interesting philosophy he believed that a true Christian should be self restraint of worldly pleasures and should not enjoy the rubbish of the world. He believed that the world outside was dark, simple, plain and sinful. but on the inside of a true Christian there lay a burning light a bright light of righteousness the Holy light and the light of God. Simply put Outside bad inside GOD (oh I mean Good ;) )

The same rules and ideas went to the building of Gothic Cathedrals, if you look on the outside it is not very plain and simple but vastly dark. Although beautiful on the outside it really doesn’t have much of God's light but what if you go in, is God present inside these churches? Yes, yes he is!! The architects of this time were amazingly smart using mathematics to keep the cathedral together they did not even need to use glue to put things together. the church, funded by patrons, ordered the creation of stained glass windows which were place on the church (in the way of the sun) so the colors would illuminate the darkness which lied in the church. These amazingly mysterious colors of the rainbow mystified the visitors and worshipers and allowed them to see "light of God". Just like St.Augustine's Philosophy the Gothic churches of the time were amazingly dark on the outside but Godly lit on the inside.

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