Lydgate and the Lanterne: discourse, heresy and the ethics of architecture in early fifteenth-century England

At the turn of the fifteenth century, architectural ethics acquired renewed prominence in England. A long-established discourse that had been developed by major figures in Europe's intellectual history, and that threatened to reject all but the most utilitarian church-building projects, was given new energy, as well as a new English vocabulary and a newly extensive application, in heretical tracts and poems. At the same time, the poet most associated with the Lancastrian court, John Lydgate, was translating a lavish paean to ingenious and luxurious craftsmanship, while his patron's circle was engaged in a wave of lavish building projects in cathedrals, universities, and parish churches-and, indeed, was prosecuting Lollards for their criticism of the same. Most remarkable, however, is that, having been scrupulously suppressed in the 1410s, a concern for restrained architecture would re-emerge twenty years later as a widely shared architectural ideology among England's elite, including the king, Henry VI. For thirty years, it would come to shape a series of significant building projects. This article argues that this change must be understood as representing the reconstitution of a number of ideas and claims, necessitated by the dissolution of the interdependent antagonisms of the 1410s, in the context of newly influential spiritual, ethical, and sensory discourses.