120. Mediæval Cathedrals
With the emergence from the Dark to the Middle Ages, architecture revived with an application to churches instead of temples, circuses, and baths. In southern Europe adherence to the old Roman model remained close, and the style is known as Romanesque. In northern Europe the Roman principles found themselves on newer soil, tradition bound less rigorously, and the style underwent more modification. The arch became pointed at the top. Vertical building lines were elongated at the expense of horizontal ones, which in the lower and less brilliant sun of the north are less effective in catching light and shade and giving plastic effect than on the Mediterranean. The dominant effect became one of aspiration toward height. This is the so-called Gothic architecture, developed from the twelfth century on, most notably in northern France, with much originality also in England, and undergoing provincial modification in the various north European countries. In fact, the style was finally carried back into Italy, to compete there with the Romanesque order, as in the famous cathedral of Milan.
As an artistic design a Gothic cathedral is as different from an imperial Roman building as the latter from a Greek temple. Yet it represents nothing but a surface modification of Roman methods. Its essential engineering problems had been solved more than a thousand years earlier. The effect of a hemispherical arch associated with low round columns, and of a high pointed one soaring from tall clusters of buttresses, is as diverse as can be obtained in architecture. But so far as plan or invention are concerned, there is no decisive distinction between the two orders.