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

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After several months of keeping this very big secret, I am extremely proud to announce my next book: Heaven On Earth, an illuminating narrative of the conception and legacies of twenty of the world’s greatest cathedrals interwoven with an exploration of the lives, legends and scandals of the people who built them. Heaven On Earth will be published by Head of Zeus, and as soon as I have a confirmed release date, I will post it. I don’t want to give away too much more at this time, but if you would like an idea of what can be expected from the book, the synopsis can be found below. Emma J. Wells has written an accessible, authoritative and lavishly illustrated account of the building of 16 of the world's greatest cathedrals * Spectator * I loved the whole atmosphere of the Oxford Literary Festival. From breakfast, alongside some of the attendees, who were talking books with each other a mile a minute, to the public event at The Sheldonian where everyone was lively and engaged – I felt I had arrived in a kind of literary heaven. These places set in stone that curious paradox of Catholicism: the scandal of particularity; the universal mission of the Catholic Church. In Heaven on Earth Emma J Wells certainly captures the particularity of these cathedrals, and her book is filled with tales of local patrons, craftsmen and the wider politics of the kingdoms in which these cathedrals were built. The buildings themselves narrate the messy realities of the more political life of the Church: the competition between abbeys; different cathedrals vying to become the seat of the archbishop; fights over relics or privileges. Her next book, Heaven On Earth: The Lives & Legacies of the World’s Greatest Cathedrals, will be published by Head of Zeus in July 2022. [25] She is currently working on her third book about relic merchants, who bought and sold their way through the churches of medieval Christendom.

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. She is currently a lecturer at York University, a Research Fellow at Durham University, and is heavily involved in a number of learned societies and academic journals. She is a regular contributor on both television and radio, having appeared or consulted on such television programmes as ‘The History of Home’, ‘The Architecture the Railways Built’ and ‘A Great British Story: From the Dales to the Sea’. 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. 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 ] It is beautifully illustrated, with a helpful ground plan at the beginning of each chapter. The premise is that Europe’s great cathedrals tell the story of Christianity. Specifically, in her introduction, Wells argues that “these great multifaceted buildings were attempts to make the spiritual concrete”, and “represent symbolic voyages between this world and the next”.This New TV Series Explores the Fascinating History of Homes All Over the World". House Beautiful. 18 June 2020.

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 Wells grew up in North Yorkshire, on the fringes of the Yorkshire Dales, where her grandmother instilled a passion for medieval architecture. [7] She attended a Church of England primary school before being educated at St Francis Xavier (Roman Catholic) School in Richmond and the University of York, where she read Art History and Buildings Archaeology. She was awarded her Doctorate from Durham University in 2013 with a thesis entitled "An Archaeology of Sensory Experience: Pilgrimage in the Medieval Church c.1170–c.1550". [8] Career [ edit ] Shines scholarly light on the history of the great cathedrals of Europe and uncovers the wealth of human stories they hold. Rich in animated, erudite and compassionate storytelling about how people in the past expressed spirituality in magnificent physical form... An epic ode to some of our most beautiful and beloved buildings. -- Helen Carr

Saunders, Tristram Fane (8 March 2019). "Period drama's professional pedants: what do historical advisers actually do?". The Telegraph– via www.telegraph.co.uk. The creation of the Gothic style in twelfth-century France proclaimed the dawning of a new era which swept across Europe during the later middle ages. An enterprise of ‘cathedral makers’, sustained by kings, chapters, abbots and nobles of European high society, mobilised an expansive programme of building in a quest to literally build Heaven on Earth. Throughout Christendom, these magnificent skyscrapers of glass and stone began to dominate the landscape of many cities, towns and even the smallest of villages. More was to come. The ‘French work’ was no longer an architectural prodigy, because across Christendom a great number of new Gothic churches was rising from the scaffolding of its army of builders. It infiltrated Norman and native building styles to produce an ‘English’ variation; and then it spread across Europe, pushing the limits of technology and experimentation, as medieval masons were far from resistant to stylistic borrowings and intermingling as they travelled around from project to project.