Chapter 6 Medieval British Society, 1066–1485 - Lyceum Books

134 Part II Norman Britain
King’s College Chapel from the south. Most of the wall space has been opened up for
stained glass windows; the weight of the roof is carried on buttresses set at right angles to
the main axis of the building.
Reproduced by permission of the Royal Commission on the Historical Monuments of
England.
nave of Canterbury is an outstanding example. The fi nest of all the Perpendicular
buildings is the chapel of King’s College, Cambridge, the result of Henry VI’s inspiration
and Henry VIII’s continuing interest and fi nancial support. Although it
is sometimes asserted that medieval architects were anonymous, that is untrue.
Their names are often known. The greatest builders were perhaps William of Sens,
a Frenchman who worked at Canterbury in the twelfth century and was seriously
injured when he fell from scaffolding there, and John Wastell, a native Englishman
who designed much of King’s College Chapel.
Most of the medieval churches contain stained glass windows, which on sunny
days fl ood the buildings with color as well as light. Thirteenth- century glass is surpassingly
lovely; the gemlike brilliance of its reds and blues has never been equaled.
But the larger windows created in the fourteenth and fi fteenth centuries have their
own special merits. Unfortunately, much medieval stained glass was destroyed in
later centuries, some of it by pious but misguided persons who regarded all pictorial
art as blasphemous or superstitious, but enough remains, especially at Canterbury
and York, for one to appreciate its quality. Pictorial windows were useful as teaching
devices in the Middle Ages, when most people were illiterate and could not read the
Bible itself. The large biblical scenes incorporated in Perpendicular- style windows
were obviously ideal for this didactic purpose.
Outside England, styles were similar but churches were built on a smaller scale.
In Scotland, large cathedrals were erected at St. Andrew’s and Glasgow, with more
humble churches suffi cing for the bishops of Aberdeen, Dunkeld, Dunblane, and