Europe’s 100 Best Cathedrals
by Simon Jenkins
Viking, £30, 360 pages
The feeding of the 5,000 notwithstanding, the founder of Christianity never seemed all that enamoured with large-scale public worship. “When thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father which seeth in secret, shall reward thee openly.”
It is to the One True Church, and certainly not to the teachings of the New Testament, that we owe the magnificence of medieval cathedrals. “The dull mind rises to truth through that which is material,” wrote Suger, abbot of St Denis in the 12th century. Equally, of course, the splendour which Suger helped to create enabled the dull mind to appreciate the power of bishops.
