The Year 1300 and the Creation of a New European Architecture

The theme of the book is the origin of Late Gothic architecture in Europe around the year 1300. It was then that Gothic architecture graduated from a largely French into a wholly European phenomenon with new centres of art production (Avignon, Florence, Barcelona, Prague, Krakow) and newly-empowered institutions: kings, the higher nobility, towns and the friars. Profound changes in spiritual and devotional life altered the relations between architecture and liturgical use. In short, architecture around 1300 became at once more international and more heterogeneous.
The book addresses these radical changes on their own terms- as an international phenomenon. By bringing together specialists in art, architecture and liturgy from the USA and from many parts of Europe it aims to employ their separate expertise, and to integrate each into a broader European perspective.