Cathedral construction was a massive undertaking that took generations of work by everyone from artists and architects to prisoners of war
Bridgeman/ACICathedrals arose for different reasons. Santiago de Compostela in northwestern Spain is believed to lie over the resting place of St. James the Great, the patron saint of Spain. Other Gothic structures were built to house sacred treaures, such as Sainte-Chapelle in Paris, which was commissioned by King Louis IX to hold holy relics from the Passion. A grand cathedral with strong sacred ties could attract pilgrims to a town, bringing in commerce and attention.
Romanesque architecture, which preceded the Gothic, could be built by large teams of relatively unskilled workers. Gothic construction, on the other hand, required smaller, well-trained groups of professional craftspeople. Enslaved laborers, usually prisoners of war, were sometimes employed. Most cathedral builders were adequately paid and some even enjoyed privileges such as tax exemption.
Once the site had been chosen and cleared, the master builder measured and marked out the ground plan and deep foundations were excavated. Although architectural plans were made in advance, the building process tended to be dynamic, with many cathedrals adapting and improvising around the original plans as new techniques became available.
Workers in the cathedral of Palma de Mallorca, Spain, which is almost as tall as that of Beauvais, came up with a system of counterweights under the roof that allowed the immense cathedral nave to be finished successfully. In Amiens, in northern France, a ring of side chapels was built to reinforce the huge central section of the cathedral. But even these were not enough. Master mason to the king of France, Pierre Tarisel was brought in to add further reinforcement.
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