Heaven on Earth: The Lives and Legacies of the World's Greatest Cathedrals

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Stunningly illustrated and endlessly illuminative, Wells’ authoritative yet accessible volume on the golden age of the cathedral leads the reader on a fascinating journey through 1000 years of striking ecclesiastical architecture.Indeed, Wells was actually refounded in the midst of the 12th-century English civil war aptly known as The Anarchy. Captures the particularity of these cathedrals, and…is filled with tales of local patrons, craftsmen and the wider politics of the kingdoms in which these cathedrals were built. Known today for its midsummer music festival, throughout the medieval era Glastonbury had been better known for having the largest monastic foundation in all England. We are experiencing delays with deliveries to many countries, but in most cases local services have now resumed.

Wells’ selection runs from Istanbul’s sixth-century Hagia Sophia to Florence’s 15th-century Santa Maria del Fiore, but its primary focus is the pinnacle of the Age of Gothic – roughly from 1140 to 1280 – as manifested in England and France. Scene Three: Chartres, France, William me Breton described the growing cathedral’s vaults as bringing to ‘look like the shell of a tortoise’ referring to the higher vaults and a longer and wider nave than any other in Christendom. A glorious history of sixteen of the world’s greatest cathedrals, interwoven with the extraordinary stories of the people who built them. His poems have been published by Reliquiae, Bad Lilies, The Interpreter’s House, and Under the Radar, among others.

Transporting the reader from the chaotic atmosphere of the masons’ yard to the cloisters of power, each chapter is a journey of exploration through a different cathedral.

As Emma tells us in this episode, her interest in cathedrals was sparked while she was studying history of art at university, where she became fascinated by “the elements of ecclesiastical buildings that you wouldn’t know were there unless you studied them”.Santiago de Compostela was built on the site of the supposed tomb of St James, martyred in c44; Notre-Dame de Saint-Denis stands where the third-century missionary-martyr Saint Dionysius finally fell after his beheading on Montmartre. Wells is an ecclesiastical and architectural historian, and in some passages the lure of architectural exposition impedes an otherwise lucid and absorbing narrative. The financing of both Salisbury and York, for instance, was aided by the sale of indulgences: the contributions of the penitent faithful were, in essence, offset against their sins.