Liturgy and Architecture from the Early Church to the Middle Ages

Liturgy and Architecture from the Early Church to the Middle Ages
Author: Allan Doig
Publisher: Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.
Total Pages: 268
Release: 2008
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 9780754652748

In this book Allan Doig explores the interrelationship of liturgy and architecture from the early Church to the close of the Middle Ages, taking into account social, economic, technical, theological and artistic factors. These are crucial to a proper understanding of ecclesiastical architecture of all periods, and together their study illuminates the study of liturgy. Buildings and their archaeology are standing indices of human activity, and the whole matrix of meaning they present is highly revealing of the larger meaning of ritual performance within, and movement through, their space. The excavation of the mid-third-century church at Dura Europos in the Syrian desert, the grandeur of Constantine's Imperial basilicas, the influence of the great pilgrimage sites, and the marvels of soaring Gothic cathedrals, all come alive in a new way when the space is animated by the liturgy for which they were built. Reviewing the most recent research in the area, and moving the debate forward, this study will be enormously useful to the liturgist, clergy, theologians, art and architectural historians, and those interested in the conservation of ecclesiastical structures built for the liturgy.

Liturgy and Architecture

Liturgy and Architecture
Author: Allan Doig
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 328
Release: 2017-03-02
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1351921851

In this book Allan Doig explores the interrelationship of liturgy and architecture from the Early Church to the close of the Middle Ages, taking into account social, economic, technical, theological and artistic factors. These are crucial to a proper understanding of ecclesiastical architecture of all periods, and together their study illuminates the study of liturgy. Buildings and their archaeology are standing indices of human activity, and the whole matrix of meaning they present is highly revealing of the larger meaning of ritual performance within, and movement through, their space. The excavation of the mid-third-century church at Dura Europos in the Syrian desert, the grandeur of Constantine's Imperial basilicas, the influence of the great pilgrimage sites, and the marvels of soaring Gothic cathedrals, all come alive in a new way when the space is animated by the liturgy for which they were built. Reviewing the most recent research in the area, and moving the debate forward, this study will be useful to liturgists, clergy, theologians, art and architectural historians, and those interested in the conservation of ecclesiastical structures built for the liturgy.

The Liturgical Past in Byzantium and Early Rus

The Liturgical Past in Byzantium and Early Rus
Author: Sean Griffin
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 287
Release: 2019-08-15
Genre: History
ISBN: 1107156769

The first major study of the relationship between liturgy and historiography in early medieval Rus.

A History of the Church Through Its Buildings

A History of the Church Through Its Buildings
Author: Allan Doig
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Total Pages: 393
Release: 2020
Genre: Church architecture
ISBN: 0199575363

Allan Doig explores the Christian Church through the lens of twelve particular churches, looking at their history, archaeology, and how the buildings changed over time in response to developing usage and beliefs.

Early Medieval Architecture

Early Medieval Architecture
Author: R. A. Stalley
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Total Pages: 276
Release: 1999
Genre: Architecture
ISBN: 9780192842237

Drawing on new work published over the past twenty years, the author offers a history of building in Western Europe from 300 to 1200. Medieval castles, church spires, and monastic cloisters are just some of the areas covered.

Gender Differences and the Making of Liturgical History

Gender Differences and the Making of Liturgical History
Author: Teresa Berger
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 253
Release: 2020-03-26
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 135193466X

Mapping uncharted territory in the study of liturgy's past, this book offers a history to contemporary questions around gender and liturgical life. Teresa Berger looks at liturgy's past through the lens of gender history, understood as attending not only to the historically prominent binary of "men" and "women" but to all gender identities, including inter-sexed persons, ascetic virgins, eunuchs, and priestly men. Demonstrating what a gender-attentive inquiry is able to achieve, Berger explores both traditional fundamentals such as liturgical space and eucharistic practice and also new ways of studying the past, for example by asking about the developing link between liturgical presiding and priestly masculinity. Drawing on historical case studies and focusing particularly on the early centuries of Christian worship, this book ultimately aims at the present by lifting a veil on liturgy's past to allow for a richly diverse notion of gender differences as these continue to shape liturgical life.

Rhythm

Rhythm
Author: Lexi Eikelboom
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 376
Release: 2018-08-29
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0192563947

Rhythm: A Theological Category argues that, as a pervasive dimension of human existence with theological implications, rhythm ought to be considered a category of theological significance. Philosophers and theologians have drawn on the category of rhythm--patterned movements of repetition and variation-to describe reality, however, the ways in which rhythm is used and understood differ based on a variety of metaphysical commitments with varying theological implications. Lexi Eikelboom brings those implications into the open through using resources from phenomenology, prosody, and the social sciences to analyse and evaluate uses of rhythm in metaphysical and theological accounts of reality. The analysis relies on a distinction from prosody between a synchronic approach to rhythm, which observes the whole at once and considers how various dimensions of a rhythm hold together harmoniously, and a diachronic approach, which focuses on the ways in which time unfolds as the subject experiences it. Based on an engagement with the twentieth-century Jesuit theologian Erich Przywara alongside thinkers as diverse as Augustine and the contemporary philosopher Giorgio Agamben, Eikelboom proposes an approach to rhythm that serves the concerns of theological conversation. It then demonstrates the difference that including rhythm in such theological conversation makes to how we think about questions such as "what is creation" and "what is the nature of the God-creature relationship?" from the perspective of rhythm. As a theoretical category, capable of expressing metaphysical commitments, yet shaped by the cultural rhythms in which those expressing such commitments are embedded, rhythm is particularly significant for theology as a phenomenon through which culture and embodied experience influence doctrine.

Standing on Holy Ground in the Middle Ages

Standing on Holy Ground in the Middle Ages
Author: Lucy Donkin
Publisher: Cornell University Press
Total Pages: 526
Release: 2022-02-15
Genre: History
ISBN: 1501753851

Standing on Holy Ground in the Middle Ages illuminates how the floor surface shaped the ways in which people in medieval western Europe and beyond experienced sacred spaces. The ground beneath our feet plays a crucial, yet often overlooked, role in our relationship with the environments we inhabit and the spaces with which we interact. By focusing on this surface as a point of encounter, Lucy Donkin positions it within a series of vertically stacked layers—the earth itself, permanent and temporary floor coverings, and the bodies of the living above ground and the dead beneath—providing new perspectives on how sacred space was defined and decorated, including the veneration of holy footprints, consecration ceremonies, and the demarcation of certain places for particular activities. Using a wide array of visual and textual sources, Standing on Holy Ground in the Middle Ages also details ways in which interaction with this surface shaped people's identities, whether as individuals, office holders, or members of religious communities. Gestures such as trampling and prostration, the repeated employment of specific locations, and burial beneath particular people or actions used the surface to express likeness and difference. From pilgrimage sites in the Holy Land to cathedrals, abbeys, and local parish churches across the Latin West, Donkin frames the ground as a shared surface, both a feature of diverse, distant places and subject to a variety of uses over time—while also offering a model for understanding spatial relationships in other periods, regions, and contexts.

A Companion to the Eucharist in the Middle Ages

A Companion to the Eucharist in the Middle Ages
Author: Ian Levy
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 660
Release: 2011-10-28
Genre: History
ISBN: 9004221727

The Eucharist in the European Middle Ages was a multimedia event. First and foremost it was a drama, a pageant, a liturgy. The setting itself was impressive. Stunning artwork adorned massive buildings. Underlying and supporting the liturgy, the art and the architecture was a carefully constructed theological world of thought and belief. Popular beliefs, spilling over into the magical, celebrated that presence in several tumultuous forms. Church law regulated how far such practice might go as well as who was allowed to perform the liturgy and how and when it might be performed. This volume presents the medieval Eucharist in all its glory combining introductory essays on the liturgy, art, theology, architecture, devotion and theology. Contributors include: Celia Chazelle, Michael Driscoll, Edward Foley, Stephen Edmund Lahey, Lizette Larson-Miller, Ian Christopher Levy, Gerhard Lutz, Gary Macy, Miri Rubin, Elizabeth Saxon, Kristen Van Ausdall and Joseph Wawrykow.

The Sacred Architecture of Byzantium

The Sacred Architecture of Byzantium
Author: Nicholas N. Patricios
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 506
Release: 2014-04-24
Genre: Architecture
ISBN: 075569399X

The churches of the Byzantine era were built to represent heaven on earth. Architecture, art and liturgy were intertwined in them to a degree that has never been replicated elsewhere, and the symbolism of this relationship had deep and profound meanings. Sacred buildings and their spiritual art underpinned the Eastern liturgical rites, which in turn influenced architectural design and the decoration which accompanied it. Nicholas N Patricios here offers a comprehensive survey, from the age of Constantine to the fall of Constantinople, of the nexus between buildings, worship and art. His identification of seven distinct Byzantine church types, based on a close analysis of 370 church building plans, will have considerable appeal to Byzantinists, lay and scholarly. Beyond categorizing and describing the churches themselves, which are richly illustrated with photographs, plans and diagrams, the author interprets the sacred liturgy that took place within these holy buildings, tracing the development of the worship in conjunction with architectural advances made up to the 15th century. Focusing on buildings located in twenty-two different locations, this sumptuous book is an essential guide to individual features such as the synthronon, templon and ambo and also to the wider significance of Byzantine art and architecture.