Brepols The Gothic Cathedral in Cracow and the European Architecture Around the Year 1300: 15 (Architectura Medii Aevi)

The turn of the fourteenth century was a difficult period in the history of late medieval Europe, marked by political instability, endless wars and all kinds of disasters. Yet it saw an extraordinary flourishing of Gothic architecture, marked by constant stylistic transformations that gave rise to a new phenomenon in European architecture: the late Gothic. This book is devoted to the Gothic cathedral in Cracow (1320-1364), an edifice that perfectly embodies these complex transformations. Although situated on the periphery of the Latin world at the time, it is one of the most stylistically advanced buildings that can be counted as examples of "architecture around 1300", featuring most of the artistic phenomena that distinguish this period in the history of medieval art. Moreover, this church served as the place of coronation and necropolis for the kings of Poland, and as a national shrine of the patron saint of the Kingdom, Saint Stanislaus, placing it on a par with sacred places such as Reims, Saint-Denis, Westminster, Aachen or Prague. This new study presents Cracow Cathedral in the broader context of the stylistic transformations that marked the Gothic architectural period between 1270 and 1350, and approaches this interregional phenomenon from a completely new angle, taking into account many buildings in Poland and Central Europe, that are generally overlooked. In addition to the history of style, the book focuses on the interface of politics, functional and liturgical considerations, and requirements of ceremony and display as determinants of the form and function of an architectural work.