Gothic Savageness Rebecca S Churio Queipo In this paper I want to discuss some aspects about gothic architecture, but one must begin by explaining what gothic architecture is. Flourishing during the high and late medieval period, gothic architecture evolved from Romanesque architecture and was succeeded by Renaissance architecture, is most familiar as the architecture of many of the great cathedrals, abbeys and churches of Europe, its characteristics lending themselves to appeals to the emotions, whether springing from faith or from civic pride, but we cannot discuss gothic architecture without analyzing the ideas of John Ruskin an English prominent social thinker and philanthropist, author of the Stones of Venice, one of the books from which this paper will be focused on. “We shall find that Gothic architecture has external forms and internal elements, these elements are certain mental tendencies of the builders, legibly expressed in it; as fancifulness, love of variety, love of richness, and such others.” 1 Ruskin emphasized in connections between nature and society, which is the type of connection I would like to make, and here it will be between gothic architecture and the masons. The need to introduce John Ruskin comes because I want to explain what gothic architecture was for him and the nature of gothic. Every building of the Gothic period differs in some important aspect from every other and many include features which, if they occurred in other buildings, would not be considered gothic at all; so every building we examine will have a greater or less degree gothic character, this character itself is made of many mingled ideas, for example pointed archers, vaulted roofs and grotesque sculptures do not constitute a gothic character but when some or all of these things come together and have life is when this character is created. “Unless both the elements & the forms are there, we have no right to call the style Gothic. It is not enough that it has the Form, if it have not also the power and life. It is not enough that it has the Power, if it have not the form” 2 Since gothic character is form, power and life coming together, it is not one or the other that produces it but their union, and gothic cannot exist where they are not found. We must determine first what the mental expression is, and secondly, what the material form is of gothic architecture. My argument derives from this theory of  1 John Ruskin, The Stones of Venice. Volume the Second. The Sea-stories, 1853, Smith, Elder & Co., London, page 4  2 John Ruskin, The Stones of Venice. Volume the Second. The Sea-stories, 1853, Smith, Elder & Co., London, page 5