The name was coined by neo-classical French critics in the seventeenth-century who pretended to believe that the earlier style of buildings was a barbarous form invented by the Goths. In fact it was invented by French cathedral architects in the Ile-de-France (Paris and south-east of Paris) in the twelfth century and called by contemporaries opus francigenum (“French work”). This style emerged from the Romanesque (see also the Cistercians) around 1120. The structural principles of the Romanesque arch distributed the weight of the stone above it as a lateral pressure which forced the …
536 words
Citation: Editors, Litencyc. "Gothic Architecture". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 07 November 2005 [https://staging.litencyc.com/php/stopics.php?rec=true&UID=301, accessed 23 November 2024.]