Page:History of the German people at the close of the Middle Ages vol1.djvu/177

 ARCHITECTURE 1 65 religious spirit of the times, noble Christian poems embodied in stone and colour. The Christian-Germanic, or so-called Gothic, art has been fitly described as the architectural embodi- ment of Christianity. A Gothic edifice not only repre- sents organic unity in all the different parts, but is as it were an organic development from a hidden germ, embodying both in its form and material the highest truths, without any sham or unreality. All the lines tend upward, as if to lead the eye to heaven. The order, distribution, and strength of the different parts symbolise severally the ascendency of spirit over matter. All the details and carvings of its profuse ornamentation are in harmony with each other and with the fundamental idea of the edifice. Constructed after a fixed plan, in the spirit of sacrifice and prayer, many of these build- ings, even in their present state of decay, strike the be- holder with wonder, and excite him to piety and devotion. If it be asked how it was possible for so great a number of admirable buildings to have been erected in Germany in such a comparatively short time, we have only to point to the extensive organisation among architects in those days, and the numerous ' building- unions ' which existed. Corporations, which are so agreeable to the German taste, were common amongst artists as well as in all other departments of life, and they enabled their members to reach the highest excellence. Within the respective guilds all hands in the masters' schools or the stonemasons' workshops, from the apprentice upward, were kept under strict discipline and trained to a particular end ; it was required of them that they should know the art practically as well as theoretically.