St. Stephan`s cathedral in Vienna counts among those few medieval monuments that are most precisely dated by
means of written documents, and therefore it seemed unnecessary to question the chronology as established in the
19th century. According to the written tradition, the "Albertinian" choir was begun in 1304 and consecrated in
1340, and the first stone of the "Rudolphinian" nave was laid in 1359. The south tower was added to the nave in
1380 and completed in 1433, and its northern equivalent was begun in 1450 by Hanns Puchsbaum who, previously,
in 1446 received the commission to vault the nave. Archaeological observations, however, caused a considerable
revision of this established chronology, supported by a new-and more literal-reading of the written sources. It is the
existing hall choir that is to be identified with the building begun in 1359 and completed within seven years by
Rudolph IV to house the collegiate chapter established in 1365. The adjoining south tower was begun together with
the new choir, but soon abandoned and resumed around 1380. The nave, however, instead of predating the tower,
started only after the completion of its ground story in 1400; its south wall was completed in 1435, its north wall in
1465. The two "Rudolphinian" portals dating from 1360-65 were on this occasion transferred to their present
position; their original place, however, was in the adjoining western chapels built under Rudolph IV and completed
by 1365/66. While architectural history attributed the completion of the nave and the design-though not the
execution-of the north tower to the celebrated Hanns Puchsbaum, his contribution to St Stephan`s reduces itself to
the heightening of the central nave while maintaining the traditional notion of simple cross-rib vaulting. The late-
Gothic vaulting of the nave, the construction of the western gallery and the baldachins over the altars, and
especially design and construction of the northern tower that was begun in 1467 thus becomes the work of Laurenz
Spenning. When Spenning died in 1477, the nave had been just completed in 1474, followed by the lower portion
of the north tower in 1476.
The chronological changes to some essential parts of St Stephan`s Cathedral are of important consequences to our
picture of Austrian architecture in the late Middle Ages. It is therefore not the delicate formal system of the nave,
but the rather cubic structure of the hall choir the pillars of which resemble strongly those introduced by Peter
Parler at Prague that now becomes characteristic for the general style under Rudolph IV. The late Gothic of the
early 15th century, on the other hand, is characterized to a much larger extent than hitherto assumed by historicist
tendencies. More crucial, however, are the consequences for Laurenz Spenning who has been considered so far as
the lesser talented executor of the designs produced by the renowned Hanns Puchsbaum. In charge of the
cathedral`s lodge for close to a quarter of a century, he emerges now as one of the leading architects of the 15th
century in Central Europe. His importance manifested itself on the general meeting of cathedral lodges at Ratisbone
in 1459 where he, jointly with Jodok Dotzinger from Strasbourg, became mainly responsible for the establishing of
the constitution of stone masons.