Building a Medieval Cathedral
Construction of Places of Worship in the Middle Ages
A craftsman could begin the building of a medieval cathedral and even that man's grandson wouldn't see it finished. Who was involved in a cathedral's construction?
The question of how cathedrals were built has fascinated people for centuries. Many of our most famous cathedrals took centuries to build. Medieval life was extremely uncertain; life expectancy was short, resources were few, populations small and ever-changing due to incidents of plague and disease and often, finances were lacking. How cathedrals were built at all in these circumstances is amazing.
Medieval Craftsmen who Worked on a Cathedral Building Site
Medieval builders had to create buildings on a huge scale without access to labor-saving devices such as cranes and hoists. Building skills were highly valued and trade secrets were often only available to building guild members or were passed from father to son.
A medieval building site could employ hundreds of workers and people would travel from miles around to take part in cathedral building. The medieval building site employed dozens of different groups of workers and at the various stages of building, different craftsmen were required. The largest group of people on the site were the general laborers. These men mostly lived near the site of the cathedral and received cash in hand at the end of each working day.
The more specialized workers did important jobs such as mixing the mortar for the building. Specialized craftspeople were paid at a higher rate and were recruited by the master mason, who was in charge of the whole project. These workers included glaziers, scaffolders, carpenters and metal workers.
The master mason was the highest position on the site and was only offered to a worker with years of building experience. It was the master mason’s job to oversee the whole build, recruiting workers as necessary, keeping an eye on costs and obtaining all the building materials needed. Any mason who wished to take part in building the medieval cathedrals would be tested by the master mason himself.
The Building Season
The main building season on the European cathedrals coincided with the fine weather and the longest days. This meant that building work was done mostly during the summer months. The mortar used to set the cathedral walls would not set properly in bad weather and the stone would crumble and collapse. The only work that could continue during the winter months was stone carving, which could be done indoors if necessary. Many stone masons worked on a reduced income during the winter, carving stones ready for the next season’s build.
Although few craftsmen had the satisfaction of seeing a cathedral finished in their lifetime, their reward came from imagining that their sons or grandsons would one day pray in a building that their ancestors had helped to create.
References:
Erlande-Brandenburg,Alain.The Cathedral Builders of the Middle Ages [Thames and Hudson,1993]
Scott,Robert A. The Gothic Enterprise [University of California Press,2003]
