A Glossary of Church Architectural Terms

Abacus, usually a square uppermost part of a capital..

 Abbey, a church or chapel of a monastery.

 Aisle, the side of a nave (q.v.) separated from the nave proper by a colonnade.

 Ambulatory, passageway around the choir, often a continuation of the side aisles of the nave.

 Apse, a semi-circular or polygonal vaulted space behind the altar.

 Apsidiole, small apse-like chapel.

 Arcade, a series of arches carried on piers or columns.

 Barrel vault, semi-cylindrical vault with parallel abutments and of constant cross sections.

 Basilica (1), a rectangular building with a central nave, side aisles separated by colonnades, with or without a transept, (2) Roman Catholic Church that has been accorded certain privileges by the pope.

 Bay, a vaulted division of a nave, aisle, choir or transept along its longitudinal axis.

 Blind (arch, arcade), an arch or arcade with no openings, usually as decoration on a wall.

 Boss,  a projecting stone at the intersection of ribs, frequently elaborately carved.  Its function is to provide a net intersection of the ribs and tie them into one unit.

 Buttress,  a masonry member projecting from a wall, rising from the ground, and counteracting the outward thrust of the roof or vaulting.  In Gothic architecture, a flying buttress is a freestanding element connected by an arch to the outer wall.

 Canopy, a protective roof above statues

 Campanile, term only applied to a bell tower which is detached from a church..

 Capital, the head of a column.

 Cathedral, the chief church of a Diocese (Roman Catholic or Episcopal) which contains the Cathedra, the seat of the Bishop.

 Chancel, interchangeable with choir (q.v.), sometimes the area in front the altar.

 Chevet, an apse (q.v.), typically the ambulatory (q.v.) and radiating chapels (q.v.).

 Choir,  area at the end of the nave which is reserved for clergy or monks (modern  - singers), and which contains the altar and choir stalls.

 Choir stalls, the row of stepped seats on either side of the choir, facing inwards.

 Cinquefoil,  a figure of five equal segments.

 Clerestory, the exterior wall of a nave above the level of the aisles with windows.

 Cloister,  quadrilateral enclosure surrounded by covered walkways, the center of activity for the inhabitants of a monastery.

 Close, the area on which the cathedral and subordinate building stand.

 Columbarium,  a structure of vaults lined with recesses for urns.

 Concha, semi-circular niche with a semi-dome.

 Corbel or Console,  ornamental bracket that projects from the wall.

 Crocket, an ornament consisting of a projecting piece of sculptured stone or wood.  Used to decorate the sloping ridges of gablets, spires, and pinnacles.  Usually carved as foliage.

 Crossing, the area of a church where the nave is intersected by the transept.

 Crypt,  underground chamber beneath the altar in a church, usually containing a saint’s relics.  It sometimes extends as far as the crossing, so that the choir and altar are sometimes considerably higher than the nave and aisle. 

 Engaged column,  a column embedded in a wall, not free standing.

 Finial, the topmost portion of a pinnacle, usually sculptured as an elaborate ornament with upright stem and cluster of crockets; seen at a distance, it resembles a cross from any angle of vision.

 Galilee,  a chapel or porch at the entrance to a church

 Gargoyle, a pierced or tunneled stone projecting from a gutter and intended to carry rain away from wall and foundations.  It is usually carved into the image of a beast or ugly creature.

 Gallery, an upper story, running along the side of a church, open on one side to the interior.

 Groin vault,  type of vaulting caused by two equally large barrel vaults (q.v.) crossing at right angles; the angle formed by the intersecting vaults is the groin.

 Intrados, the inner face of an arch or vault.

 Lady chapel, a chapel dedicated to the Virgin Mary.

 Lancet,  a pointed arched window of one opening frequently arranged in groups of two to five.

 Lantern tower, a tower with windows shedding light into the crossing (q.v.).

 Lunette, a semi-circular space above doors and windows, sometimes framed and decorated.

 Misericord,  In the choir stalls of medieval church, a bracket (often grotesquely or humorously carved) beneath a hinged seat which, when the seat was tipped up, gave some support to a person standing during a lengthy service.

 Narthex, the single-story porch of a church

 Nave,  the area of a church between the façade and crossing or choir, specifically, the central area between the aisles.

 Niche, a recess in the face of a wall or pier, prepared to receive a statue.

 Oculus,  a small circular opening admitting light at the top of a dome.

 Pier, a mass of masonry supporting an arch or vault and distinct from a column, A clustered pier is composed of a number of small columns.

 Pinnacle, a turrent tapering upward to the top, its gracefulness enhanced by crockets (q.v.),and top stone called a finial (q.v.).

 Pulpitum, a screen dividing the choir from the nave.  Often called Rood Screen.

 Predella, the step or platform on which an altar is placed.

 Portal, a major entrance to church, emphasized by sculpture and decoration.

 Quatrefoil, a figure used in window tracery, shaped to form a cross or four equal segments of a circle.

 Radiating chapels, chapels leading off from the ambulatory, and arranged in a semi-circular fashion.

 Reredos, the wall or screen at the back of an altar, either in carved stone, wood or metal.

 Retrochoir, in some cathedrals, the portion of the chancel (q.v.) behind the high altar at the extreme east end.

 Respond, long narrow column or engaged column, mainly in Gothic architecture, which supports the arches and ribs of groan vaults or the profiles of arcade arches.

 Reliquary, a casket containing one or more relics.

 Rib, a structural molding of a vault.

 Rood Beam, a large beam set transversely across a church from north to south on which stands a crucifix.

 Rood screen, the screen dividing the choir from the nave.

 Rose Window, a round window, with tracery (q.v.) dividing it into sections, called petals. 

 Sanctuary, the part of the church which contains the high altar.

 Sedilla, seats in the sanctuary (q.v.) near the altar, usually three in number for clergy.

 Shaft, the main part of a column, from its base to its capital.

 Spandrel,  the triangular space between the outer curve of an arch and an enclosing frame of mouldings, often richly carved with foliage.

 Tracery, a term for the variations of mullions in Gothic windows and for geometric systems on wall panels and doors.

 Transept,  section of a church a right angles to the nave and in front of the choir.

 Trefoil,  either a carved three-leaved ornament, or a three lobed opening in tracery (q.v.).

 Triforium, space below the clerestory (q.v.).

 Triptych,  a picture, design or carving on three panels, often an altar piece.

 Tympanum, the area above a portal (door) enclosed by an arch, and the most important site for sculpture on the exterior of  the church.

 Vault, the ceiling of a church formed of concrete, stone in mortar or brick in mortar forming a continuous semicircular or pointed arch.

 Vesica, an aureole or pointed oval shape, surrounding a sacred image.

 

 

1.  1.    Narthex or atrium

 

2.     2.  Interior western section of forecourt has often been developed as the “Galilee”

 

3.  3.     Narthex together with the

 

4.   4.    West towers forms a twin-towered façade

 

5.     5.  The central nave of the basilica is flaked by

 

6.    6.  The two side aisles.

 

7.   7.   The crossing is surmounted by a central tower.

 

   8.  This is also the point from which the arms of the transept start.

 

9.      Continuing from the central nave, the choir extends eastward.

 

10.  To this is connected the apsidal-ended sanctuary (apse) and in some cases also an

 

11.  Ambulatory, often incorporating chapels.

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Pay As You Go Urbanism

[Image: By San Rocco].

"Even divorced from their political context, though, these images are provocative illustrations of another phenomenon: that is, the museumification of urban space, particularly in Venice, a city steadily losing its population.

The idea that we might someday see the urban cores of historic European cities simply abandoned by residents altogether and turned, explicitly, into museums, surrounded by pay-as-you-go turnstiles, does not actually seem that far-fetched."

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WHEN DID SEEING BECOME BELIEVING?
by Jon Lackman | 15 November 2010 | Books, Medieval

Roland Recht’s 1999 book Believing and seeing. The art of Gothic cathedrals has finally been published in English, in a translation by the late Mary Writtall.

In the July 2010 issue of Metascience Ellen M. Shortell writes:

Studies in medieval religion, science, literature, and art, particularly in the past two decades, have focused a great deal of attention on the role of vision in later medieval thought. It is clear that by the year 1200, Richard of St. Victor’s “simple perception of matter” was no longer simple, but was recognised by many as a means to the understanding of profound truths … Recent scholarship on Gothic art and architecture has in fact been interested in related themes—the interrelationship of architectural space, colour, light, and figural imagery; the viewer’s experience of religious buildings; the visual and material properties of medieval art and their relationship to spirituality. Where most studies that aim for an integration of media have focused on specific sites, however, Recht casts his eye more broadly on the phenomenon of Gothic … [T]he book reads more as a wide-ranging compendium of observations gleaned over the course of a distinguished career than as the sustained, in-depth thesis on visual culture that the title suggests …

Recht is convincing when he argues that architects and other artists must have been conscious of the effects of their invention. He suggests that master masons began to invent new forms to fulfill their clerical patrons’ requests, thus gaining greater respect and developing a new sense of their own powers; the Gothic cathedrals could not have come into being without a community of artists who communicated with one another and began to see themselves in a new light. These ideas are extended to sculptors and painters of the fourteenth and, especially, fifteenth centuries in the final chapters of the book.

In the preface to the French edition, the author expressed the wish that this book be seen as a contribution to the history of ideas as much as to the history of visual art, and that colleagues recognise the value of cross-disciplinary approaches. The scope of the undertaking is ambitious, and observations from the well-trained eye of a distinguished scholar are often tantalizing.

In Times Higher Education, Caroline Bruzelius writes:

This book … is an ambitious, broad-ranging study of the role and function of the image within the medieval church … [Recht] brings together two subjects that are usually studied separately, architecture and sacred images, and he proposes that the latter cannot be understood or experienced without the former, in both spatial and liturgical terms … The second part of the volume focuses on the modes of viewing religious images in relation to the “theatre” of the Mass and as active forces in lay piety. Here there are many important insights, not least of which is the enhanced sacralisation of liturgical space after the promulgation of the doctrine of transubstantiation – that is to say, the real presence of Christ at the altar during the Elevation of the Host … Recht’s analysis of sacred images as mnemonic devices that engage vision as an active force in a spiritual journey is deeply compelling, and he presents new and powerful interpretations of how sacred space conditioned and participated in a larger system of signification of the image … No one knows better than Recht that church spaces were not the open spaces we see today, but instead partitioned into distinct zones, access to which was conditioned by gender, lay or clerical status, or other systems of separation and power … Visual access to the sacred may have been as much an instrument of power and authority as a communally shared experience.

In The Medieval Review, Charlotte A. Stanford lauds “this translation of a complex study by a noted European art historian”:

[Recht] employed his keen eye and pen in mingling historiography and analysis to explore the phenomenon of Gothic throughout Europe … One of Recht’s greatest strengths as a scholar in this study is his own connoisseur’s eye, especially as he discusses the manipulation of architectural space. These sections are heavy with specialized, but necessary terminology. A case in point is his discussion of the torus moldings on the arch openings of each level of the nave of Sens cathedral, required for explaining how the rich juxtaposition of light and shadow was formed at Sens … In keeping with the title, however, the book’s main thrust is to examine the cathedral as a mingled system of seeing and belief … This system revolves, Recht argues, around an increasing desire to provide eyewitness proof of the miraculous through depictions of the lives of saints and the mystery of the Host … [Cathedrals] paved the way for the development of illusionistic space in Quattrocento painting [he argues]. This concluding claim is bold and thought provoking … Nevertheless, Recht’s book must be treated with caution: it is not a general introduction either to cathedrals or ways of seeing … [It] is ultimately, despite its weaknesses, an intriguing study of Gothic accompanied by investigation of many critical questions in the discipline, written by an observant and thoughtful scholar and now made easily accessible to the English-speaking world.

In the Journal of Ecclesiastical History, Paul Binski writes:

Recht’s study can now be seen as part of a trend towards the study of visuality which emerged in the 1980s and 1990s, and which entailed a broader enquiry into the hierarchy of the senses and epistemology. As an hypothesis about actual historical change it raises several questions … The strength of Recht’s book is its practical engagement with art and architecture especially. It has useful, if rather distended, opening sections on the history of the modern reception and interpretation of Gothic cathedrals.

Mino by Antonio Ravalli Architetti

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