Heavenly places

BOOKS

- Kate Green

HEAVEN ON EARTH EMMA 1. WELLS Heaven on Earth: The Lives and Legacies of the World's Greatest Cathedrals Emma J. Wells (Head of Zeus, £40)

EUROPE'S cathedrals are its most uplifting treasures. They towered over E their own age and have towered over ages ever since. They embody architecture's capacity to inspire devotion and awe in people of all faiths and none. Although today's churches are faltering, cathedrals are as popular as ever, for both worship and admiration. They seem to offer a timeless consolation to all comers.

Cathedrals were assertions of the temporal authority of the church and its bishops. Throughout the Middle Ages, as kingdoms rose and fell, they were centres of continuity and stability. As custodian of the afterlife, the Church defied royal authority. Its wealth was unequalled and, in return, it offered Europe administration, education, welfare and licensed travel, winning widespread loyalty beyond that of transient rulers. The Church could call on armies, summon crusades and ordain pilgrimages. For the best part of a millennium after the fall of Rome, it was the nearest Europe had to a unifying power. Cathedrals were its citadels.

How to describe these buildings other than with bland superlatives is a challenge. Every summer, the great cathedral of Amiens north of Paris in France holds a display of laser light and sound across its west front. The projection into the night sky appears to demolish the building and then rebuild it, inside and out, piece by piece, as if the masons were still at work. In a final burst,  he façade blazes forth, its Gothic details restored in vivid medieval colours. The show is the closest we get to a medieval experience, rendering today's grey stonework something of an anti-climax ('In glorious technicolour', December 1, 2021).