ABSTRACT
This chapter outlines the documentary and architectural evidence of medieval architectural practice, suggests that arguments made against the expressive use of geometry are themselves open to question and some of them have apparently overlooked internal evidence that might point to an expressive tradition of design. One thirteenth-century document of the Reims Cathedral chapter has been written over several different layers of architectural drawings of the cathedral, Sheet D displaying at least four levels and Sheet E three. The problem presented by quadrature is not its lack of expressive potential but that all the documentary evidence points to its use for generating architectural elements and details, such as a tower or a cloister, a pinnacle or a mullion, and not the whole layouts of buildings. The chapter outlines the architectural and building practice between the mid-tenth and mid-thirteenth centuries has drawn on the documentary evidence of the period as much as possible.
