ROANOKE TIMES 
                      Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times

DATE: Sunday, February 16, 1997              TAG: 9702140085
SECTION: EXTRA                    PAGE: 10   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: KEVIN KITTREDGE

GOTHIC: GOD'S PRESENCE IN LIGHT

So what is Gothic?

The word was first applied to a kind of medieval architecture prevalent in the north of Europe. Those first great Gothic buildings had three things in common - pointed openings for windows and doors, a system of ribbed vaulting for the ceilings and high walls holding sometimes vast windows of stained glass. Light was the presence of God on earth to the medieval Christian - and those Gothic churches were designed to let in glorious colored light.

"We usually think of Gothic as being so dark and gloomy and mysterious," said Whitney Leeson, who lectures on Medieval France at Roanoke College. "And it is all of that, too. But the most important part of a Gothic cathedral is light. It was the manifestation of the heavenly spirit."

Because of all that glass, the walls of Gothic churches were too weak to support their roofs. Consequently they were propped up from the outside by so-called "flying buttresses." The results were often spectacular - but by the heyday of the Gothic Revival in the 19th century, new building methods had made the outside supports unnecessary, Leeson said.

Nonetheless, most of the Gothic Revival churches in Roanoke at least nod to tradition, including a modest buttress or two outside their sanctuary walls.

LENGTH: Short :   33 lines
ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO:  Flammarion publishers. The cathedral of Reims, France, 
          was built between 1250-1285.