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

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Dr. Emma is a renowned academic, author and broadcaster within the topics of ecclesiastical & architectural history. She received her BA (Hons) in History of Art and her MA (Dist.) in Buildings Archaeology from the University of York, following up with a PhD from Durham University which focussed on archaeological aspects of pilgrimage in the English medieval church. Emma will be at St. Mary’s Church, at 7:30PM on Saturday 18th June to talk about her fascinating career and her upcoming book ‘Heaven on Earth – The Lives and Legacies of the World’s Greatest Cathedrals’. This work, to be published in July, follows her hugely well-received 2016 book, ‘Pilgrim Routes of the British Isles’ appealing to historians, architecture enthusiasts and walkers. Captures the particularity of these cathedrals, and…is filled with tales of local patrons, craftsmen and the wider politics of the kingdoms in which these cathedrals were built.

The rebuilding of Canterbury Cathedral following the fire of 1174 is a project we can still experience today. Over a million people from across the globe are welcomed through the doors at Canterbury every year.But this is just one story. Transporting the reader from the chaotic atmosphere of the masons’ yard to the cloisters of power, each chapter is a journey of exploration through a different cathedral. It takes in their cultural landscapes, the physical settings, as well as the personal stories, relationships and tragedies that marked each architectural revolution, from the largest gothic cathedral in Northern Europe, York Minster of England, where countless disasters (deliberate, accidental and foolish) wreaked havoc on its fabric, tothe Hagia Sophia of modern-day Turkey in the south, an iconic landmark in which are entwined the legacies of medieval Christianity, the Ottoman Empire, resurgent Islam and secular societies. Together, the stories reveal how these physical embodiments of Heaven helped shape modern Europe and changed the world – each a story more riveting than the next. Welcome to the real Pillars of the Earth. During her doctoral research, Wells was a research consultant for the 2011 British Museum's "Treasures of Heaven: Saints, Relics, and Devotion in Medieval Europe" exhibition and the 2012 Lindisfarne Gospels Durham Leverhulme Trust project. [9] Janet Gough is a writer and lecturer on cathedrals and church buildings. Her latest book is Cathedral Treasures of England and Wales: Deans’ Choice (Scala, 2022).Wells, Emma J. (2022). Heaven On Earth: The Lives & Legacies of the World’s Greatest Cathedrals. London: Head of Zeus. ISBN 978-1788541947 Travel, Promenades. "Dr Emma J. Wells | Guides for history holidays | Promenades Travel". www.promenadestravel.com.

Wells, Emma J. (2017) 'Kipling through the Archives’ and ‘Historic Buildings Analysis’, in Brightman, J. (ed.) Charting Chipeling: The Archaeology of the Kiplin Estate. North Yorkshire. Solstice Heritage, 6–17; 31–50. ISBN 978-0993310607 Perhaps we could have learned a little more about the goodness of those who, against all the odds, caused these ambitious, beautiful, and holy buildings to be built to transport us to heaven. Wells tells the stories of the people and politics behind the often centuries-long building, extending, repairing, and reshaping of cathedrals, beginning with Emperor Justinian’s remarkable, ornate church of Hagia Sophia, in Istanbul, which became a mosque, a museum, and now a mosque again, and influenced many (including Christopher Wren). It ends with Brunelleschi’s 1435 cupola for Florence Cathedral, which “synthesized Gothic configuration and Neo-classical style”. Wells, Emma J. (2016). Pilgrim Routes of the British Isles. London: Robert Hale. ISBN 978-0719817076In 2012, Wells established Emma J. Wells Heritage Consultancy. The firm provided professional heritage and archaeology services, [10] and was responsible for co-organising and co-leading a series of community projects throughout 2013 and 2014 including the HLF funded project, Charting Chipeling which sought to uncover the social and architectural history, and underlying archaeology, of Kiplin Hall in North Yorkshire, and was a contributing author on the resulting publication: Charting Chipeling: The Archaeology of the Kiplin Estate. [11]She was also a partner on the HLF-funded Ledgerstone Survey of England and Wales. [12] A glorious illustrated history of twenty of the world’s greatest cathedrals, interwoven with the extraordinary stories of the people who built them. Heaven on Earth covers an entire millennium of cathedral-building from c. AD 500 to the sixteenth century. The central core of Emma Wells’s book focuses on the explosion of ecclesial construction that began with the emergence of the Gothic style in twelfth-century France, which produced such remarkable structures as the cathedrals of Notre-Dame, Canterbury, Chartres, Salisbury, St Mark’s Basilica in Venice and the Sainte-Chapelle in Paris. From Constantinople’s Hagia Sophia to London’s Westminster Abbey, from Florence’s Duomo to St Basil’s in Moscow, Emma Wells tells the story of the feats of engineering that brought twenty great cathedrals into being. 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. Together, they reveal how 1000 years of cathedral-building shaped modern Europe, and influenced art, culture and society around the world. Heaven on Earth: The Lives and Legacies of the World’s Greatest Cathedrals by Emma J. Wells – eBook Details As part of the 900th anniversary celebrations for St. Mary’s Church, Long Wittenham we are delighted to host Dr. Emma Wells for an illuminating insight into the religious architecture that surrounds us. She is a Guardian for the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings (SPAB) and a member of the Hexham and Newcastle Diocesan Advisory Committee (DAC). [5] Wells is also the secretary and assistant editor for the Society for Church Archaeology. [6] Early life and education [ edit ] Wells starts each chapter graphically, with a church builder and his motives for (re)building a great church, emphasising the ongoing challenge of raising funds. She sets out circumstances and obsessions, from building shrines for still-to-be-canonised local saints (key to revenue generation) to establishing cathedral status, ranking (York alongside Canterbury), and establishing Reims for French coronations. Town versus church, riots, structural weaknesses, fires, towers collapsing — we experience it all, including greedy and evil motives, and nasty, often legalised retribution.

Wells is also the writer and presenter of the three-part series, St Cuthbert’s Way, which premiered on Viral History's YouTube channel in 2018. [30] Publications [ edit ] Books [ edit ] Chartres was also renovated after a fire in 1134, with a new great western entrance flanked by two square towers (shown here). Flying buttresses that allowed the cathedral to reach soaring heights are visible along the outside wall on the left. I soon felt that this cathedral was, somehow, mine. It was an odd sense of ownership, given that my stint in Cambridge was only a year long, and that Catholic worship had ceased there some 500 years earlier. But perhaps this is, after all, the point of cathedrals. Embedded in the local, they point to the universal and remind us that the communion of the Church is not a series of local franchises of a larger corporation, but living (and hopefully lively) communities of the faithful, sharing in the communion of the wider Church. Wells brings these buildings vividly to life, peopling them with their authors and sponsors, their triumphs and tribulations, and beautifully illustrated * Country Life *The emergence of the Gothic in twelfth-century France, an architectural style characterized by pointed arches, rib vaults, flying buttresses, large windows and elaborate tracery, triggered an explosion of cathedral-building across western Europe. It is this remarkable flowering of ecclesiastical architecture that forms the central core of Emma Wells's authoritative but accessible study of the golden age of the cathedral. 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. Between 2013 and 2014, Wells became a Visiting Lecturer in Theology at York St John University. In 2014, Wells was appointed as Programme Director and Associate Lecturer for the PGDip in Parish Church Studies at the University of York. [3] In 2014, Wells was elected as Full Member of the Chartered Institute for Archaeologists. [13] She begins with Hagia Sophia because she sees it as the archetypal cathedral building. The sentiments of emissaries sent from a pagan king who ruled an area of modern-day Uk-raine confirm her argument. On seeing the liturgy being celebrated in Hagia Sophia they confessed to not knowing whether they were in heaven or earth. Similar sentiments are expressed by Abbot Suger in his sermon at the consecration of the extension of St-Denis; the cathedral is a liminal space, not quite earth-ly but not entirely heavenly, either. Emma Jane Wells, FSA (born 1986) is an English church historian, academic, author, and broadcaster, specialising in the ecclesiastical and architectural history of the late medieval and early modern age. She is currently a lecturer in Ecclesiastical and Architectural History at the University of York. [1] Wells is a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London (FSA), [2] a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy and a founding member of the Centre for Parish Church Studies (CPCS). [3] [4]