Cathedrals

= By Leif and Dylan =



**Cathedrals are large churches that have a Bishop to oversee them, and they are used to worship God. They have many parts including an altar, relics, cloisters and a chapter house. It was hard building medieval cathedrals so they needed professional tradespeople. The materials used to build them were sometimes hard to come by. The town would build cathedrals for many reasons, such as to be close to God, a place to worship, to have town meetings, to hold relics and documents. **

From About France

The picture on the right is by FAR and from

**The cathedrals would hold relics. Relics are items that have been blessed by someone holy or a possession of a holy person or sometimes a body part of someone holy. There is one church with a saint's head in a glass box as a relic. Relics are used to bring up the cathedral's status or make it look better. Overall relics are pretty important to cathedrals and their making. **

**The people who started the cathedral were the men of the chapter and it was their decision to build it or not. Some of the workers who worked on the cathedral were the master mason, stone masons, carpenters, people who cart various materials such as wood and stone, stone miners, tilers, plasterers and general laborers. **

**People would get the materials to build a cathedral by walking around in the local towns with the cathedral’s relic asking for money. Sometimes this worked because people were so religious back then that they would do almost anything for God. Most of the time the chapter of the town would donate the profits from their land for a certain amount of time. If that didn’t work the chapter would ask the pope or a rich noble for money. **

**The cathedrals were built starting with the base and eight corners. Then the floor of the cathedral was built and the tilers then worked on that. Next they made the pillars for it. The walls might have taken a while because of the weather or lack of money or stone. **
 * If the cathedrals were Romanesque style, the walls would be thick. After finished the walls they would start making the roof. To make the roof they would need a pulley system and scaffolding. After they put the pulley system and scaffolding in place, they would make an arch. There are two different styles of architecture that could be used. **


 * Another style of architecture is the Gothic style. Gothic Style has ribbed ceilings (which is an X that crosses on the arch). That is called a rib cage vault. Gothic has thinner walls supported by buttresses and flying buttresses. The buttresses are pillars that are on the outside of the cathedral they support the walls with flying buttresses. Gothic also has large stained glass windows while the other style has small, narrow windows. The second style is the Romanesque. The Romanesque style is without the X just a dome with thick walls and lots and lots of pillars. **

The picture on the right from wikipedia commons and taken by Gary Bridgman
**Christians would make cathedrals for many reasons and one of them is for the status. If a town had a cathedral, people from other towns would come and there would be more trade and therefore more income. Cathedrals held a chapter house and a school for young boys and monks. One of the most important reasons for building a Cathedral was that if they were very large then the people of the town could use the space. Sometimes they would have markets in them in case of bad weather. The main reason for creating a cathedral is that it was a religious place of worship. **

**In the school in a cathedral, the students spent most of their time writing at their desks and reading. Their desks were stationed in the cloist ****ers. The school was only for boys. The boys would come to school at the age of four and sometimes after some years of schooling they would become monks. **

**Books were very important to medieval learners. Books were some of the only things that could preserve knowledge in the medieval period because if you were passing info down orally between generations it would undoubtedly change. All the monks had to know how to read and write and that's why boys went to the school in the cathedral. **

From the Salisbury cathedral

**Cathedrals are places of worship and inspiration. Cathedrals were a great leap forward in both religion and architecture during the middle ages in Europe. **

These are our works cited.

"Cathedral Architecture." ThinkQuest. Oracle Foundation. Web. 19 Mar. 2012. <http://library.thinkquest.org/10098/cathedrals.htm>. <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; display: block; font-family: 'Arial Narrow'; font-size: 16px; text-decoration: initial; vertical-align: baseline;">"The Cathedrals." Yukon Education Student Network. Web. 21 Mar. 2012. <http://www.yesnet.yk.ca/schools/projects/middleages2000/cathedrals/cathedrals.html>. <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: 'Arial Narrow'; font-size: 16px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> "Udflugt Til Salisbury Og Stonehenge." Familien Sørensens Hjemmeside. Web. 19 Mar. 2012. <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: 'Arial Narrow'; font-size: 16px; vertical-align: baseline;">__.__ <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">"Cathedral:." Google Books. Web. 13 Apr. 2012. <http://books.google.com/books/about/Cathedral.html?id=SC9MgfcQIKAC>.