In the twelfth century, Christians in Europe began to build a completely new kind of church - not the squat, gloomy buildings we call Romanesque, but soaring, spacious monuments flooded with light from immense windows. This book explains the genesis and development of the Gothic style.

Universe of Stone establishes Chartres Cathedral's iconic role in Europe's history: a revolution in thought embodied in stone and glass, a philosophy made concrete through the cooperation of theologians, craftsmen and engineers. It shows us that there are other ways of seeing the world and reveals, as never before, the complex workings of the medieval mind.