Gordon Strachan, Chartres: Sacred Geometry, Sacred Space, Floris Books, Edinburgh, 2003.
Strachan finds the origin of the gothic architecture during the 12th century in connections developed between Western Europe and the Islamic world and cites the influences of Islamic Spain. His focus, however, is on the role of the Crusader kingdoms in the Holy Land as a source for Islamic knowledge imported back to France. Crusaders, according to Strachan, even brought Islamic masons to Europe to teach their advanced skills. Strachan believes the crusading knights, including the Knights Templar, were tremendously impressed with the achievements of Islamic architecture and by Byzantine wonders such as Hagia Sophia. They were also drawn, Strachan maintains, to the esoteric knowledge of the Sufi mystics with whom they became neighbors in the Holy Land.
According to Strachan, there was soon a process of vigorous cultural exchange underway in the Crusader kingdoms. The victorious knights became rapidly aware they had conquered a civilization far more advanced than their own. The Knights Templar, Strachan believes, were fascinated by the impacts of Islamic sacred architecture on those within. Some Christians too, Strachan writes, soon sought how to “express and embody a similar sense of the tremendous mystery of God’s essential being” that would “enable souls to rise up from out of submersion in the material world into the true light of reality,”, achieving, in today’s terms, “an altered state of consciousness.” Islamic sages, architects, and craftsmen seemed to know how to accomplish this result.
Abbot Bernard of Clairvaux too aspired to realize a palpable joining of the human being with the divine. Strachan describes parallels between the geometries of Solomon’s Temple, Islamic mosques, and the gothic cathedrals of France. Chartres, as presented by Strachan, is based on classic sequences of geometrical forms. The crossing, the epicenter of the cathedral, is the heart of a geometric mandala. The result is a vast resonating vibrational chamber constructed of taut stone and filled with brilliant light, resembling a musical instrument. To enter the cathedral is, in Strachan’s view, to enter within our own interior miraculously suffused with the powerful sensation of sacred presence.
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