On cathedrals and medieval piety was: Re: Chomsky News Network

Carrol Cox cbcox at ilstu.edu
Fri May 31 17:33:00 PDT 2002


Todd Archer wrote:
>
> Eric said:
>
> >[CLIP]I marvel at the >CHicago skyline for
> >much of the same reason, though the exploitation >of American capitalism is
> >less brutal than feudal Europe..
>
> Depending on the time and place, cathedrals and churches were built by
> professional itinerant workmen, peasants, and bourgeois of all incomes (and
> nobles too, I believe); most times working in concert, sometimes just on
> their own (I think, on this one too).

While I think that Eric's contrast of feudal and capitalist exploitation is a bit oversimplified, there is another point here. I think the exploitation visible in the cathedrals is not that of those who built them -- but of those from whom the resources for the building (including the food of the builders) was wrung. Agricultural productivity was rather low, and it took a good deal to feed all those workers, who were hardly building cathedrals with one hand and producing their own food with the other???

Carrol

P.S. The entrance hall to the Metropolitan allows repels Jan whenever we've visited it. Not only does a lot of the art work there exhibit exploitation on its face -- but it's all been plundered several times over the centuries or millenia to reach the Metropolitan.



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