Other Spaces: Medieval Architectural History Between Theory and Practice

Other Spaces: Medieval Architectural History between Theory and Practice Zachary Stewart, Texas A&M University Recommended Citation: Zachary Stewart, “Other Spaces: Medieval Architectural History between Theory and Practice,” Different Visions: New Perspectives on Medieval Art 6 (2020): 1-15. I begin with a space that I would contend is which are becoming increasingly common gloriously other: the former parish church as parochial church attendance continues to of St. Gregory Pottergate in the city of decline throughout the country, are discon- Norwich in eastern England (Figs. 1–2). certing insofar as they leave historic build- Rebuilt at the end of the fourteenth century, ings vulnerable to the unpredictable boom- almost certainly by the workshop of the and-bust cycles of the market economy. But prolific master mason Robert Wodehirst, I would argue that these radical trans- the building is one of over thirty parish formations can be productive to the extent churches preserved in an urban environ- that they allow architectural historians to ment that boasts more surviving medieval engage the sites in question in unconven- ecclesiastical structures than any other tional ways. Indeed, as Heidegger famously municipality in northern Europe.1 Like noted in his tool analysis, it is only when an many of the churches that comprise this im- object breaks—when it ceases to accomplish pressive corpus, St. Gregory is no longer a the work for which it ostensibly exists—that functioning house of worship, having been its ontic properties come into fuller view.2 made “redundant” in the 1970s. Since this Thus, experienced in a radically altered state closure, the building has served a variety of that disrupts commonly held notions of temporary functions, including that of a what a church should “look like” or “feel mixed-use arts space. Such was the state of like,” St. Gregory raises fascinating ques- the church when I first experienced it in tions about the theories and the practices 2013—at which time the division between that we, as modern scholars, adopt in our the nave-cum-cafe and chancel-cum-shop, investigations of the material culture of the once dominated by a monumental wooden Middle Ages. crucifix (the rood), was marked by a large It must be admitted that there is a dragon suit modeled after examples worn in certain degree of willfulness in using archi- civic processions in Norwich since the Late tecture as a medium for examining this rela- Middle Ages. Such church conversions, tionship between theory and practice given Different Visions, Issue Six 2020 Stewart 2 Fig. 1. Interior of the former parish church of St. Gregory Pottergate, Norwich, England, late 14th century, view looking northeast (author’s photo). the fact that buildings have played an increasingly diminished role in art-historical discourse over the past three-quarters of a century—a state of affairs that some have traced back to the rejection, by emigre Ger- man scholars, of the comprehensive, and ideologically compromised, methods of Kunstwissenschaft in post-war Britain and North America.3 That said, buildings have by no means dropped out of studies of the material culture of medieval Europe, if only because the churches of the period, both high-end and low-end, were nothing less Fig. 2. Exterior of the former parish church of St. than monumental multimedia image plat- Gregory Pottergate, Norwich, England, late 14th century, view looking northeast (author’s photo). forms. Indeed, whether one looks to earlier paradigms, such as Émile Mâle’s vision of Different Visions, Issue Six 2020 Stewart 3 the cathedral as a “summa in stone,”4 or to two very different texts, one medieval and more recent paradigms, which have focused one modern, concerning one of the most on issues such as “integration,”5 “holism,”6 celebrated examples of Gothic architecture and liturgical or devotional practice,7 archi- in Northern Europe: Canterbury Cathedral tecture, sculpture, and painting (whether on (Fig. 3). The first is the Tractatus de walls or in windows) are seen as enjoying a combustione et reparatione Cantuariensis close, if highly complicated, relationship. ecclesie, written by the monk, chronicler, Despite this rapport, however, studies of and architectural enthusiast Gervase of Can- medieval buildings—especially the Gothic terbury (d. ca. 1210), which describes the churches of Western Europe—have re- reconstruction of the east end of the build- mained remarkably impervious to the wave ing following a disastrous fire in 1174.12 The of theorization that defined the so-called second is An Architectural History of New Art History of the 1980s. Of course, Canterbury Cathedral, written by the engi- there are exceptions to this general rule, neer, phoneticist, and architectural histor- particularly in the anglophone world where critical theory has played such an outsized role in the humanities. One could point, inter alia, to Marxist-inspired studies of architectural production,8 feminist-inspired studies of architectural patronage,9 or, more recently, interdisciplinary studies that mine the rich literature associated with the “spa- tial turn” in the humanities.10 Beyond such efforts are other wide-ranging accounts of medieval architecture that, though less in- vested in postmodern epistemologies, adopt a variety of critical approaches to historical, historiographical, and interpretive issues.11 On the whole, however, it seems fair to say that medieval architectural history remains an intellectually conservative field. Among the circumstances contributing to this state of affairs, I would suggest, is a lingering faith in the presumed objectivity of that mainstay of medieval architectural history: the building monograph. But it should be noted that the very origins of this popular genre undermine such a view. Indeed, des- Fig. 3. East end of Canterbury Cathedral, England, pite its passing resemblance to Vasarian 1175–84 (photo by Stephen Murray; image courtesy of biography, the building monograph is ac- the Media Center for Art History, Department of Art tually rooted in the congruent approaches of History & Archaeology, Columbia University). Different Visions, Issue Six 2020 Stewart 4 ian Robert Willis (1800–1875), which de- of architectural development continue to scribes the evolution of the building from reveal new insights into even the most well- the foundation of the see under Archbishop known monuments. Late twentieth- and Augustine of Canterbury in 597 to the dis- early twenty-first-century studies of none solution of the English monasteries under other than Canterbury Cathedral, whether King Henry VIII in 1535.13 Both works, in the form of single-author books or multi- though separated by over six centuries, author volumes, are a perfect case in point.16 broke new methodological ground insofar as Yet the monograph, like any genre, pre- they collated textual evidence, physical evi- supposes a certain point of view, a domain dence, and first-hand observation into of acceptable knowledge, a range of relevant cohesive diachronic narratives whose tech- facts to be examined and issues to be inter- nical character lent them an air of clinical rogated. As such, it constitutes what philo- objectivity. Critically, however, neither of sopher Levi Bryant has described as “an their authors wrote without ulterior apparatus of appearance,” a tool for making motives. As architectural historian Carol select things visible in the world.17 On this Davidson Cragoe has argued, Gervase mani- definition, then, the building monograph pulated his text in order to advance the should be understood as equal parts theo- reputation of his fellow monks as consci- retical exercise and practical exercise. In- entious custodians of the cathedral priory, deed, contra the antonymic way that they thereby fending off a proposed removal of are frequently invoked in contemporary dis- the archiepiscopal see from Canterbury to course, I would suggest that theory and Hackington (Kent).14 As architectural his- practice should be understood as symbiotic torian Alexandrina Buchanan has argued, categories—a conclusion rooted in the clas- Willis manipulated his text in order to sical explication of the related concepts of advance the reputation of his own novel ap- epistêmê (knowledge) and technê (craft) as proach to the study of buildings, thereby extensions of ethical conduct.18 Thus, to my forging a new academic field, called “archi- mind, the question that we medieval architectural history,” that charted a middle tectural historians ought to be asking our- course between the formalism of contem- selves is less whether we should be prac- porary antiquarians and the functionalism ticing theory (because, like it or not, we are) of contemporary Ecclesiologists.15 What and more how we are theorizing practice these overlapping examples suggest is that, (because, like it or not, we should). from its inception, the discipline of me- What follows, then, is a brief exploration dieval architectural history has been domi- of how critical theory, understood as a spe- nated by a genre whose “just the facts” ap- cial branch of intellectual inquiry, might aid proach belies a more complicated reality. such an endeavor. Needless to say, the prob- This is not to say that the building lem is a vast one, and I certainly do not monograph has failed to be a powerful make any claim to being comprehensive. My vehicle for historical investigation. On the starting point is a text that has proved to be contrary, inquiries combining textual and remarkably productive in the humanities physical evidence into diachronic narratives over the past half century: Michel Foucault’s Different Visions, Issue Six 2020 Stewart 5 enigmatic essay “Of Other Spaces.” I then neutralize, or reverse the set of relations mobilize the concept of the heterotopia set that are designated, reflected, or repre- forth therein to examine the site introduced sented by them.”21 These special emplace- at the outset of this paper, the church of St.

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