>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.
I'm not sure if words such as "wrung" could be used categorically. No doubt, there would have been people who protested the last of any food being taken, but I suspect (cathedral building was never a strong interest of mine) that much of the material was bought and paid for on the "open market" with donated funds and/or donated supplies. It's that same sort of piety that sends some Catholic faithful to perform acts of self-sacrifice, such as "walking" on ones knees around a particular pillar in a church until they bleed.
As to agricultural productivity, there was a "big" jump, relatively speaking, in productivity roughly at about the same time as the architectural traditions of the Gothic cathedrals were being started, so that probably made things easier for those who supported, in one way or another, cathedral builders.
Re. plunder of architectural treasures: come now, Carrol! Those are (now practically) commodities on the open market, freely bought and sold between individuals and institutions! Surely there's nothing wrong with that!
Todd !{)>
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