Marvel at the Longevity

God and the Tree of Knowledge
Nasher Museum, Duke Univ.

European cathedrals are distinguished for their craftsmanship and longevity; the component that is most remarkable, at least to your humble blogger, is the stained glass. Some pieces, like God and the Tree of Knowledge, date back nearly 800 years.

The resources needed to produce Medieval artwork were immense:

Stained glass was in great demand in the Middle Ages, and manufacturing it required large quantities of sand, wood ash and powdered metals melted at extremely high temperatures. According to one estimate, the European glass industry burned through roughly 13 million tons of firewood between 1250 and 1500...

From lumbering and harvesting to mining and quarrying, producing materials for medieval art demanded enormous amounts of manual labor, said [Pulitzer Foundation curator Heather Alexis] Smith. In the mid-1300s, the pandemic known as the Black Death killed an estimated 30-60% of the population of Western Europe, setting off decades of labor shortages...

Religious orders were perhaps the biggest drivers of environmental change in the medieval era. In sustaining their communities, monasteries often cleared forests and wetlands for farming, at times initiating large-scale building projects that required tons of quarried stone.

The greatest amount of medieval resources was used for religious purposes, and those monuments have lasted for hundreds of years.

Will our own expressions have such durability? It's doubtful, since utility is less powerful a motivator than the perceived demands of deities, and environmental constraints sap the life from invention.

Meanwhile, marvel at the stained glass.