ed some of the habits of thought of the philosophers.In the absence of written documents, however, it cannot be proved whether thesehabits were consistently embodied in the design of the buildings.9The Gothic age, as has often been observed, was an age of vision. Thesupernatural manifested itself to the senses. In the religious life of thetwelfth and thirteenth centuries, the desire to behold sacred reality withbodily eyes appeared as the dominant theme. Architecture was designed andexperienced as a representation of an ultimate reality.10 The Gothic cathedralwas originated in the religious experience and in the political and evenphysical realities, of twelfth-century France. It was described as anillusionistic image of the Celestial City as evoked in the Book of Revelation.The essence of Gothic style was most fully developed in its conquest of spaceand its creation of a prodigious, visionary scale in the cathedrals of thetwelfth century.11...
