‘Like, or Better’: Building Contracts and Late-Medieval Perceptions of Quality in Architecture

Abstract

This article uses building contracts to understand late-medieval perceptions of quality in architecture. The focus of the paper is value judgements based on existing buildings, which were to be emulated or ‘bettered’. The contracts for Magdalen College, Oxford are the central case study. This paper argues that ‘good’ in these contracts refers to the function of the building and the specifics of its design, and that other English and continental contracts also focus on the visible particulars of a structure. Such contracts make no reference to religious or political symbolism, rhetoric or iconography. It seems that, when closely engaged in the practice of building, medieval patrons and craftspeople showed aesthetic preferences of a precision not found in other sources.