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Celestial Vaults In English Gothic Architecture, John Shannon Hendrix

Architecture, Art, and Historic Preservation Faculty Publications

Many of the vaults in English Gothic cathedrals and churches are catechisms of cosmologies and celestial vaults. The tierceron and lierne ribs at Lincoln Cathedral, for example, and later lierne and net vaults at Bristol Cathedral and St. Mary Redcliffe, for example, display the geometries that can be found in medieval cosmologies such as the De Luce and De Lineis, Angulis et Figuris of Robert Grosseteste in the thirteenth century. The vaults can be read as intelligible structures of matter and the heavenly bodies. The vaulting of the nave of Lincoln Cathedral between 1235 and 1245, during the bishopric of …