Universe of Stone: Chartres Cathedral and the Triumph of the Medieval Mind
By Philip Ball
Bodley Head £20, 322 pages
FT Bookshop price: £16

In the 12th and 13th centuries, while Crusaders were sacking Jerusalem and Constantinople, another crusade was under way in Europe – a “cathedrals crusade”. Between 1050 and 1350, some 80 cathedrals were built in France alone, along with 500 large churches and several thousand smaller ones. The greatest of these was Chartres. As Napoleon remarked, its soaring architecture would make the most militant atheist uneasy.