Heaven on Earth: The Lives and Legacies of the World's Greatest Cathedrals

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More than architectural biographies, these are human stories of triumph and tragedy that take the reader from the chaotic atmosphere of the mason’s yard to the cloisters of power. A glorious history of sixteen of the world’s greatest cathedrals, interwoven with the extraordinary stories of the people who built them. These cookies help provide information on metrics the number of visitors, bounce rate, traffic source, etc.

Not only was Becket one of the most celebrated martyrs and saints in England, but Canterbury was also, in Emma’s words, a “veritable monastic theme park”. It is accepted by you that Daunt Books has no control over additional charges in relation to customs clearance. We visit Canterbury Cathedral the moment St Thomas Becket's shrine is moved to a new location after a fire nearly fifty years earlier destroyed much of the original cathedral. Thanks to meticulous planning and generous patronage, the new cathedral is built efficiently and incredibly quickly, and becomes one of the leading examples of the English gothic style. Cathedral scribes were notoriously partisan and sometimes downright dishonest when it came to the history of their buildings.

Thanks to the expertise and insight Emma provides in this episode, we are also able to uncover some of the secrets and stories of these beautiful buildings that might otherwise pass us by. Taken as a whole, however, the book offers a luminous insight into the medieval mind and the worldview that made these achievements possible.

The financing of both Salisbury and York, for instance, was aided by the sale of indulgences: the contributions of the penitent faithful were, in essence, offset against their sins.Shines scholarly light on the history of the great cathedrals of Europe and uncovers the wealth of human stories they hold. And it has the immense labour of unnamed men and women – not always willingly given – without which nothing could have been built at all.

We are experiencing delays with deliveries to many countries, but in most cases local services have now resumed. Legend has it that a congregation of devout lay-people worked for free to help build this extraordinary cathedral, which had higher vaults and a longer and wider nave than seen anywhere else in Christendom. Prefacing her account with the construction in the sixth century of the Hagia Sophia, the remarkable Christian cathedral of the eastern Roman empire, she goes on to chart the construction of a glittering sequence of iconic structures, including Saint-Denis, Notre-Dame, Canterbury, Chartres, Salisbury, York Minster and Florence's Duomo. The glossary of technical terms provided is useful and the photography is wonderful; but some drawings to illustrate the more detailed descriptive passages would have been welcome.There had been a cathedral on the site of Cologne cathedral in the fourth century when it was part of Roman Gaul.

Cults grew without it: the relics of the Blessed William Fitzherbert and Edward the Confessor were promoted, at York and Westminster respectively, for decades before they received the ultimate imprimatur from Rome.After almost a decade in academia teaching at University of York and University of Durham, in summer 2022, Emma decided to move back into the consultancy world and was appointed Principal Historic Buildings Consultant for SLR Consulting.