The biggest churches in the world: Anglo-Norman eleventh-century cathedrals

It's a miraculous gift to humanity that this thing survived the allied bombing in WWII. Much of the rest of the city was levelled.

They had amazing art. What you may be referring to is the notion of craftsmanship. There was no mass reproduction, but individual people (of all skill levels) made by hand their own art, incorporating it into every day objects and adding decorations to even various bricks that make up a wall or putting reliefs in what (to us) would be random places. This can be seen with a little walk around Venice, for example. You'll see gargoyles staring at you from back alleys, from stones on the street, from awnings on houses, the tops of keyholes in gates or attached to lamps hanging in the street. Little bits of art everywhere, made by millions of people. Most of that would not meet the critera for realism and technical proficiency of academic art, but the overall effect is one of great beauty.

You also see this with the painstaking illuminations on books -- the monks didn't just copy the books, they drew, adding their own art, throughout the book. Now maybe they were trained in copying and Latin and not in drawing, but they still drew everywhere they could draw. In the margins of pages, around letters, along the spine and between paragraphs. It was an explosion of art, from the carvings a carpenter would add to the handle of a water bucket to the carvings a smith added to the side of a spoon, or adding flowers to a dresser and turning door handles into bees or serpents, or the thousands of little statues and figurines filling churches. Then we have stained glass -- not even a simple window would do, the window had to be made with hundreds of drawings in it and different colored glass. The floors with different colors and carvings on tiles. Drapery with elaborate figures sown into it. Art, art, everywhere, there was art, only they considered it craftsmanship.

> The universe became conscious in the form of humans and asked ‘who made me?’

Or, more subtly, "who is making me?":

> Distinction: A sequence of changers can be ordered essentially or accidentally. These are called per se and per accidens sequences.

> A sequence is ordered accidentally if each changer in the sequence possesses the power to change another regardless whether any prior changer is still acting. For example: a woman may possess the power to give birth regardless whether her mother is still alive. She possesses the power of birthing in and of her own self.

> A sequence is ordered essentially if each changer in the sequence possesses the power to change another only if a preceding changer is acting concurrently upon it. For example, a clarinet does not have the power to play Mozart's Clarinet Concerto in A in and of itself. It will only play if Sharon Kam is playing upon it concurrently.¹ A mover like the clarinet is called an "instrumental" mover, happily so since the clarinet is literally an instrument! In a similar wise, TOF's very own clarinet will not make music by itself. Unfortunately, it does not seem to make music even when TOF is playing it, although he has summoned ducks in this fashion.²

[…]

> 1. An instrumental changer cannot transmit a change unless a primary changer is acting concurrently upon it.

> 2. An infinite regress has no primary changer.

> 3. There cannot be an infinite regress of instrumental changers.

* https://tofspot.blogspot.com/2014/09/first-way-part-ii-two-l...

You do not keep yourself in existence, i.e., you do not prevent yourself from going *poof* into nothingness. Something "underlies" your existence and keeps you 'going'. And something underlies that, and something… But it has to stop somewhere. A bad analogy: in a sky scraper the 99th floor keeps the 100th floor in the air, and then 98th keeps the 99th, …. But at some point there needs to be bedrock.

The eventual Prime Mover is what theologians refer to as God: that which nothing else can exist without.

No, I'm talking about drawings and paintings, just like I said.

I share your appreciation for, say, the 12th century frescos in the Apse of Sant Climent de Taüll [1], but there's nothing remotely good about the draftsmanship in any way. The best of early medieval painters are solidly outclassed by the primary schoolers of the industrial revolution.

Illuminations, you say? Like the famous drawings in the St. Albans Psalter? [2] Or the great Saxon Benedictional of St. Athelwold? [3] No sense of perspective, or even any recognition of a third dimension. And what the fuck is going on with the anatomy?

Would you frame anything from the Babmurg Apocalypse and put it on your wall? The French [4] and the Germans [5] were no better, and things didn't improve in the 13th century [6].

And then, seemingly overnight, the Renaissance happened and we had masters like Michelangelo setting standards for the rest of history. Explain that?

1 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apse_of_Sant_Climent,_Ta%C3%BC...

2 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Albans_Psalter#/media/File...

3 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benedictional_of_St._%C3%86the...

4 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ottonian_art#/media/File:11th-...

5 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carolingian_art#/media/File:Eb...

6 - https://artgallery.yale.edu/collections/objects/286

> my own home town in the 1090s.

There are quite a few to choose from: Ely, Durham, Canterbury, Winchester, etc., and of course others around Europe.