The Gothic Enterprise: A Guide to Understanding the Medieval Cathedral Book

Scott's book is an entertaining and readable overview of the culture of Gothic cathedral building in Europe, particularly France and England. A sociologist by trade, Scott shows himself to be well-studied in the literature of cathedral building, but has a tendency to base large passages on single books. He strikes me as adequately competent in the literature to write this book, but I did wonder at times about the depth of his knowledge of medieval culture as a whole.

Scott explores the cathedral from many angles, looking at its place in religious and intellectual culture, the art and craft of cathedral construction, and the logistics and politics required by this enormous enterprise. It is in these chapters where Scott's book is at its best and most useful. The book also includes several ancillary chapters on side topics ranging from Stonehenge to the extremely-hypothetical relationship that contemplative mnemonic practices in Christian monastics may have had to how cathedrals were conceived.

Given the complexity, depth, and interest of the primary topics, I could have done without many of those discursi. In particular found the section on "The Religious Experience" to be of marginal interest. Scott raced quickly through the political history of Europe in the High Middle Ages, and I think the book would have been more balanced and on firmer ground had he spent more attention there and less on highly-speculative and not-terribly-illuminating questions, such as whether or not mnemonic exercises had some affect on cathedral building.

I'm on the fence about giving this book a positive review because Scott altogether avoids what is for me the primary basic fact about cathedrals - the effect that they have on people who experience them. Obviously Scott is himself moved by these buildings, given the time and energy he has put into their study. But he writes about cathedrals as if that fact is irrelevant and of no moment. What interests him in this presentation is overwhelmingly the social facts that contributed to their construction and contemporaneous interpretation. As a sociologist, this is understandable, but as an author who has attempted to step outside his academic role and write about a topic in which he is not an expert, it's an extremely peculiar omission. It is as though his training has led him to feel that the best scientific approach to analyzing a complex phenomenon like a cathedral is to ignore the most obvious and salient fact about it. Rather than attempt in a structured and rational way to come to terms with that effect, he simply excludes it from his analysis.

It probably goes without saying that there is very little theological consideration in this book.

The result is a scattered and quick overview, often interesting, sometimes superfluous, and a readable introduction to the topic.