Of neccessity, the arcade storey had to be completed in general accordance with Matthew of Arras's design, although in the west bays, which are entirely Parler's work, the high vault responds are thickened.
Comparison of the upper storeys with those of Cologne, which Parler undoubtedly knew, shows that he was prepared to make some fairly radical departures from Rayomant precedent for the sake of ensuring that the elevations complemented the high tunnel - vault in emphasizing the unity of the choir as a longitudinal space. The main devices which promote this reading are the heavy horizontals of the triforium parapet and the strange angled projections of the clearstorey sills, which almost cut through the western high vault responds and which actually do sever most of the thin responds inherited from Matthew's Bicades.
The partial cutting was no doubt the effect preferred by Parler, bvit the complete cutting inust have been acceptable to him both for itself and because Ins father had used something very similar in the ambulatory at Schwabisch Gmund. At Prague the angled sill projections register as being a subordinate part of an even stranger feature, the angled clearstorey liglits and trifonuni openings.
The pretext for tins angling was the positioning of the internal triforiuni passage and external clearstorey passage so liard up behind the high vault icsponds as to preclude a normal junction between the responds and the triloiium arcade and clearstorey tracery. (Both paiisages were blocked in the lyth century because they weie lield to endanger the structural stability ol the choir, and in the 20th centmy doors to a new walkway passing behind the buttresses were tormed in the adjacent parts of the triforium windows.)
The extra width of the tritonum arcade openings next to the vault responds allows a good view tioni giound level nof merely of the entrances to the tritonum passage but ol the celebrated sculptured busts which sin mount them.
Painted inscriptions formerly identified the busts as the family of Сharles IV, the successive archbishops and clerical building administrators, and the two architects of the choir.
The scheme as a whole is unique, although parallels for the use of figure sculpture above passage entiances arе in the choirs of Sees and St Augustine's, Bristol.
In fact, the upper choir elevations seem to be as much indebted to south-western English sources as the high vault, for the only antecedents of the angled lights of the clearstorey are the iimilarly fimaled entrance's to the Wells clearstorey passage, and the recessed spandrels above the сlearstorey openings are evidently based on those over the east window at Wells.
Above the angled lights at Prague there is nof solid masonn, as at Wells, but single glared lights winch serve to make the tracers heads unitonn in width and height with those in ilie nairow apse windows.
Possibly Parler knew the similar arrangement in the mid-13th-century Rayomant choir of Leon.
The actual tracery patterns used at Prague letlect the influence of English fleiwing designs merely in a general way, for they are the most original Continental tracery of the 14th century. The only clearly identifiable borrowings are from Swabian sources, notably the windows of с. 1330-47 in the nave at Schwabisch Gmund (the strange 'melting' of one form into anofhci in the inteinal in the external parapets) and the east window of с. 1335 at Bebenhausen Abbey the cusping of the large circle in the right-hand window in 168 which impinges on some of the forms it encloses).
There is some irony Parler's indebtedness to English Gothic, for King John of Bohemia died fighting on the French side at Greecy in 1346, and Edward 111 had lent his support to Сharles IV's main rival for the imperial crown, Louis of Bavaria.
Nevertheless, from the viewpoint of the architect rather than the patron it would have been quite natural to take cognizance of the achievements of the most creative tradition of 14th-century cathedral Gothic, especially as Prague was a one-of rather than die product of an established German tradition of great church architecture.
Awareness of English Gofhic in the Rhineland and Swabia went back to the late 13th century when the masons of Strasbourg Cathedral recorded their decision to adopt the craft organization of the English masons.
German political horizons had long encompassed England, if only as a counterweight to France, and when Parler arrived in Prague in 1356 Edward III's victories over the French had raised English prestige in Europe to its highest level during the Middle Ages.
Nevertheless, it has to be emphasized that Parler's borrowings from the Decorated style were integrated into a design which is not English either in its basic premises or its detailed handling, for in the late Middle Ages no single nation could exercise cultural leadership in Europe in the way that France liad done during the 13th century.
How Parler was able to learn about English Decorated is nof known.
A study tour during apprenticeship is possible, for these are documented in late medieval Germany, but it may be that some kind of agreement existed which enabled architectural information in the guise of drawings to circulate among the main cathedral lodges.
Around 1350 the Strasbourg lodge obtained plans of the choirs of Notre-Dame in Paris and Orleans Cathedral, but it is not known how or by what route they came.
The influence of Parler's net vaults and complex tracery endured in Central Europe as long as Gothic architecture itself, and by around 1500 the Parler family had become known as the 'Junckherrn' (squires) of Prague and had acquired the mythical status of founders of German masonic practice. Yet the Prague choir did not start a spate of cathedral building. At Augsburg a grand new Rayonnant chevet begun after the bishop visited Prague in 1354 was finished off lamely in the late 14th century. At the minster of Freiburg-im-Breisgau, the main town in the Black Forest region, a cathedral-like choir was begun in 1354 by Peter Parlor's brofher Johann, but a quarrel between the town and the ruler of the surrounding area soon brought work to a standstill.
Other institutions which might have been expected to build a great church were content with much simpler schemes. A case in point is Aachen Minster, where the new choir added after the formal designation of the dimivh as the coronation place of future German kings in 1356 was essentially an enlarged version of the Sainte-Chapelle. That it was not a German Reims must have been partly due to the wish to preserve Charlemagne's venerable 9th-century Palatine Chapel, but it also reflects the lesser importance of the imperial office in the late Middle Ages compared to what it had been until 1250.
On the relatively rare occasions when major church building was patornized by the territorial princes, the real rulers of late medieval Germany, the outcome was invariably a hall church.
The best of 15th-century Germany's great church buildings are the nave of the Benedictine abbey church of SS. Ulrich and Afra in Augsburg, rebuilt 1494-1500 following a tire, and the continuation of the Freiburg choir from 1471 by Hans Niesenberger.
Freiburg provides an exemplar of many of the stylistic traits of the latest phase of German Gofhic, although it was not a building of the seminal importance of Prague. As in the major hall churches, the emphasis is firmly on rich and complex vaulting. The central vessel has a net vault which must be numbered among the vast progeny of the high vault at Prague, although its close and even mesh of ribs is typical of late 15th- and 16th-century designs.
The ambulatory vault is quite different and exemplifies the restless, organic quality of much 15th-ceimiry German Gofhic in its sprawling and irregular-looking rib patterns, its tangled and capital-less springings, its limited use of skeletal ribs and its overshof rib junctions suggestive of branches lashed together.
This last element is used inconspicuously in the high vault at Prague, but at Freiburg and the manу ofher late 15th-century churches where it is echoed in the cusping of the window tracery it almost becomes the leimotiv of the interior.
The ultimate development of the idea, the naturalistic rendering of untrimmed branches, did not impinge on great church architecture as such, although it can be seen on fittings and ancillary structures, for example the nave pulpit and the chapel of St Lawrence at Strasbourg. It is not at all clear what specific meanings, if any, were attached to this quasi-vegetal strain of Gofhic.
Conclusion
It seems legitimate to associate the matter-of-fact directness of the normative type, the hall church, with the practical tenor of town life, although increasingly often during the 14th century the hall format was adopted by majoi ecclesiastical corporations whose counterparts elsewliere in Northern Europe would automatically have built great churches.
Such enormous production of church buildings in Central Europe during the late Middle Ages was fuelled chiefly by the competitive civic pride of the region's burgeoning towns, and as a result the main focus of creative effort was the urban parish church rather than the cathedral or monastic church.
The one l4th-century church in Central Europe which adopted the French great church system more or less complete is Prague Cathedral. This stylistic allegiance can be ascribed without hesitation to the patrons, the Luxemburg dynasty of Bohemian kings, allies of the French royal house in family, politics and culture.
The earliest German rib vaults without webs are those in the west tower at Freiburg Minster and the 'Tonsur' chapel in the cloister at Magdeburg Cathedral, both of c. 1310-30.
Literature
1. Cristopher Wilson. The Gothic Cathedral.
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