Mathematics and the Art and Science of Building Medieval Cathedrals

Josep Lluis i Ginovart ()
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Josep Lluis i Ginovart: Universitat Internacional de Catalunya

Chapter 43 in Handbook of the Mathematics of the Arts and Sciences, 2021, pp 1203-1243 from Springer

Abstract: Abstract The Cathedral of Tortosa (1345) is one of the most important Gothic buildings of Catalonia (Spain). Its relevance is partly due to the large volume of documents that survive from the era of its construction. One of the most important of these documents is the Guarc’s parchment (c.1345–1380), which contains the drawing of the plan of a cathedral that was never built but is the oldest drawing of this type in Spain and offers us the information about the construction of geometric figures, such as the heptagon and the octagon in medieval times. The study of the Gothic layout through its imprints enables us to establish the geometric and arithmetic knowledge of the agents involved in the design and construction of the cathedral. This chapter provides a background to the use of mathematics in Gothic architecture, by way of a detailed study of the Cathedral of Tortosa.

Keywords: Medieval geometry; Medieval drawing; Heptagon; Octagon; Dome; Tortosa Cathedral (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:sprchp:978-3-319-57072-3_84

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DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-57072-3_84

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