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 in- creasingly 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 ar- ​ chitectural 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 his- tory: 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 archi- tectural 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.