Blossom before you wither

This is the side view of Notre-Dame de Reims (Our Lady of Reims, France) – the coronation cathedral of the kingdom of France. With its multiple levels of flying buttresses, portals, tracery and thousands of sculptures, this monumental cathedral represents the epitome of medieval Europe.

The cathedral was built in the early 13^th C. According to contemporaries, it was a beautiful epoch. After more than 200 years of steady population growth and technological advancement, Europe was at the peak of its prosperity. Never before, not even in the age of the ancient Roman Empire, was Europe as populous and wealthy – new cities and monasteries were established from Portugal in the West to Estonia in the East. New, mechanical manufactures powered by water allowed industrial production of goods that reached consumers from all working classes. Literacy was on the rise and many villages, even in distant Poland, established their own courts with rural archives. Art, including theater and troubadour poetry, flourished. Nearly all of the monumental cathedrals in France were built at that time.

However, the optimism and achievements of the 13^th C. were soon challenged. In the 14^th C., the Black Death swept across Europe killing nearly half of its population. As people were dying, France continued to engage in the Hundred Years’ War that devastated its countryside for decades. The age of great cathedrals – at least in Western Europe, was over. It took hundreds of years for Europe to recover – only in the 17^th and 18^th C. European population reached the same level as in the 13^th C. Thus, to me at least, the monumental cathedrals such as Reims serve as symbols of the golden century of medieval Europe, the time of prosperity that was not to repeat itself for many years....