western Europe during the first half of the Middle Ages, the dominant style was Romanesque: thick-walled buildings supported by elegant pillars and lit with round-topped windows.13 Gothic departed radically from this template. Its key motif was the pointed arch, which allowed builders to pull together enormously long and tall buildings, held together by fine stone skeletons, framing almost impossibly thin walls and lit by what could seem like acres of stained glass: colossal yet at the same time dazzlingly light, they were the physical realization of a New Jerusalem, or “heaven on earth.”14
