Re: Re: reorganisation and destruction of irish catholic churches

Burgos is a very interesting structure for several reasons.

The cathedral is predominantly mainstream French gothic, with Spanish flourishes, but the openwork spires are German.

According to Wiki, the Bishop of Burgos travelled north to attend the four-year-long Council of Constance in 1417. Part circus, part trade fair, this was the council that dealt finally with the Avignon schism which had resulted in there being no less than three sitting popes at this time, presumably slugging it out like a Dave Allen sketch while dispatching liberal quantities of papal bull.

Job done, the Bishop of Burgos apparently returned to Spain with some teutonic master-masons including one Juan de Colonia . . . [John of Cologne] . . . and that’s how Burgos ended up with German openwork spires 🙂

Juan may have embellished his cv somewhat, since we know that the towers of Cologne Cathedral were just half-built stumps at this time [posted a few pages back] and just about the only actual built example of the fabled ‘German openwork spire’ at this time was the 14th century masterpiece at Freiburg Minster

Freiburg is one of the true high points of gothic, there is subtlety in every detail and unlike the cluttered spires subsequently built [to the medieval plans] at Ulm and Cologne in the 19th century, the space under Freiburg spire is totally open and has to be one of the most extraordinary spaces ever constructed.