alt Hacker NewsThis is both incredible and I think… “misses the point” is the wrong phrase, but maybe omits something both subtle and crucial in the process.
A gothic cathedral is both an incredible work of art and also the work of hundreds or thousands of hands over decades and centuries - you are looking not just at the final product, but at the love and commitment it took to make that work of art, the long-term dedication and belief that it should exist even if we don’t live to see it exist. You’re looking at an expression of love not just for God and for art and beauty, but for future generations and people we’ll never know. The time and effort isn’t an unfortunate part of the process, it’s intrinsic to what we feel when we witness the cathedral - a connection to others, reaching both ways.
I understand why the monks have developed this technique, and I don’t disagree with them - the act of building a gothic cathedral is outside the capacity of modern society. I’ll never begrudge someone a hack to preserve some beauty in this machine we’ve created. But I can’t help but feel like they’ve created a facsimile of a cathedral - they’ve created the palace at Disneyland, not Notre Dame.
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Not every building with stone carvings will be gothic cathedrals with regular incomes- there will be thousands of small churches out there, which don't have the budget for expensive stonemasons to hand carve items for repairs.
If we want to protect historic buildings for generations to enjoy then we're going to need to be more pragmatic.
The Sagrada Família is a "recently" built cathedral, and I'd say is on a similar level as a Gothic cathedral. So modern society is not necessarily incapable of similar feats.
I do agree with you over all, but I am not certain it's outside the capacity of modern society. You only need to look at the group in France[0] where they are building a medieval castle using only period appropriate tools and techniques. It is more of a research project than an act of devotion, but I think it demonstrates that we are still capable of such acts.
Not that I disagree, but I want to confirm: you are suggesting the reason (or one of the reasons) they chose to do stone carving, as opposed to some other form of monastic pursuit, was because it took a lot of time and effort?
> But I can’t help but feel like they’ve created a facsimile of a cathedral - they’ve created the palace at Disneyland, not Versailles.
You could at least compare to Notre Dame. It’s a bit tone deaf to draw comparison to Versailles, which was a vanity project to glorify the French monarchy.
I think you're missing a subtlety of the situation. You're right that gothic cathedrals were enormous undertakings, and that the enormity was itself a worshipful and meditative act that drew in the entire community, current and future.
Even with the CNC machines, this is still a multi-decade endeavor that will span generations because the number of monks (and outside support) is small and not getting larger. They've scaled down the work required to match their capabilities, and still creating something that will last centuries. Relative to their community, it's still a cathedral effort.
The proportions, materials, overall design is quite beautiful. How is that not an expression to God? Having a few hundred people die falling off of scaffolding and taking 50 years to build is not helping anyone today.
Perhaps a few dead bodies and a couple hundred years of recitations will do the trick?
Put another way, if monks in the year 1k had a CNC router like this, they wouldn’t have peasants take 50 years to arrive at their expression to God.
It’s the architecture and the design that reflects the Lord almighty. The peasants doing it are a means to an end: so the church stands tall, so they can massacre the non-believers, burn witches, infidels, and imprison astronomers. All in the comfort of a beautiful cathedral.