The Gothic cathedral : origins of Gothic architecture and the medieval concept of order

”The Gothic Cathedral is the most stimulating and comprehensive work on the subject to date. . . . If the cathedrals are to be understood, Mr. von Simson rightly declares, they must be seen not in the light of twentieth-century esthetic observation, but of twelfth-century religious experience, through which the supernatural permeated every aspect of human existence. . . . The resulting interpretation of the monuments is a critical tour de force.” –Allan Temko, The New York Times Book Review ”Not since Mont-St.-Michel and Chartres has so poetic and so evocative a study of the Gothic movement been published. . . . The Gothic Cathedral is based on a wide factual as well as intuitive knowledge, transformed by the author’s illuminating style into a text both formidable and pleasurable.”–The Virginia Quarterly Review