Redefining the sacred in the Urban realm (original) (raw)
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Sacred Spaces: How Does Church Architecture Communicate the Sacred?
Paper: Dominican School of Philosophy & Theology, 2022
Styles of churches through the centuries reflect that particular culture’s artistic skills, available materials, and its theological expression of Christ manifesting himself in the world. Roman, Byzantine, Romanesque, Gothic, Renaissance, and Baroque styles of architecture all express the ecclesiastical piety of Christians from that time and place. A particularly “Catholic architecture” does not exist per se since the Church as its transcendent reality is not confined to any particular time and place. Church architecture’s departure in the last several decades from providing witness to the sacred is rooted in a post-Enlightenment materialist, reductionist, socialistic anthropology. This philosophical spirit was marked by a general turn toward the subjective–toward a focus on the “inner man” and the respective interpretations of his place within the cosmic order through a hermeneutic that apodictically repudiated the Gospel’s supernatural elements. This embrace of nihilism can be overcome by an architectural return to a consciousness of what Heidegger called a sense of dwelling.
“The Sacred in the City” reflects the way in which the city interacts with the sacred in all its many guises, with religion and with the human search for meaning in life. As the process of the urbanization of society is accelerating, thus giving an increasing importance to cities, it is relevant to investigate the social or cultural cohesion that these urban agglomerations manifest. Religion has been keenly observed to be experiencing a certain growth, crucially impacting cultural and political dynamics, as well as determining the emergence of new sacred symbols and their inscription in urban spaces worldwide. The sacred has become an important category of a new interpretation of social and cultural transformation processes. Taking a multidisciplinary approach, the book aims to draw a nuanced picture of the different layers of religion, as well as the sacred and its diverse forms within the city, using examples from Europe, Latin America, the Middle East, and Africa. Gómez, Liliana, and Walter van Herck (eds.), The Sacred in the City. Continuum, 2012, London.
City as Sacred Space - Sacred Spaces in the City: a Response
Städte im lateinischen Westen und im griechischen Osten zwischen Spätantike und Früher Neuzeit. Topographie – Recht – Religion, Mihailo Popović, Martin Scheutz, Herwig Weigl and Elisabeth Gruber (eds) (Veröffentlichungen des Instituts für österreichische Geschichtsforschung 66), 2015
Sacred Architecture and Public Space under the Conditions of a New Visibility of Religion
Religions, 2020
Embedded in the paradigm of the "New Visibility of Religion," this article addresses the question of the significance of sacred buildings for public spaces. 'Visibility' is conceived as religion's presence in cities through the medium of architecture. In maintaining sacred buildings in cities, religions expose themselves to the conditions of how cities work. They cannot avoid questions such as how to counteract the tendency of public space to erode. Following some preliminary remarks on the "New Visibility of Religion," I examine selected sacred buildings in Vienna. Next, I focus on the motifs of the city, the "ark" as a model for sacred buildings and the aesthetic dimension of public space. Finally, I consider the contribution of sacred buildings to contemporary public spaces. What is at issue is not the subject that moves in public and visits sacred buildings with the aim of acquiring knowledge or with the urgency to act, but rather the subject that feels and experiences itself in its dealings with public space and sacred buildings. In this context, I refer to the experience of disinterested beauty (Kant), anachronism, multi-perspectivity (Klaus Heinrich), and openness (Hans-Dieter Bahr).
Arys, 2020
Wandering through modern Rome, one of the most intriguing and ubiquitous impression is sacred architecture: many of the temples and sanctuaries of Roman Republican and Imperial times are still to be found in various stages of preservation-the sunken area at the Largo di Torre Argentina, the temples below the church of San Omobono, the temples that have been converted into churches, such as the temple of Portunus or the three of the Forum Holitorium. Their architectures have, to a certain extent, outlasted the religious changes through Medieval and Early Modern times and underwent changes induced by socio-political transformations and urban growth; however, many others disappeared completely, such as the temples in the Porticus Octaviae. The transformation into churches was often the most effective preservative measure.
The Church, the City, and Modernity
Annales. Histoire, Sciences Sociales
Dominique Iogna-Prat’s latest book, Cité de Dieu, cité des hommes. L’Église et l’architecture de la société, 1200–1500, follows on both intellectually and chronologically from La Maison Dieu. Une histoire monumentale de l’Église au Moyen Âge (v. 800–v. 1200). It presents an essay on the emergence of the town as a symbolic and political figure of society (the “city of man”) between 1200 and 1700, and on the effects of this development on the Church, which had held this function before 1200. This feeds into an ambitious reflection on the origins of modernity, seeking to move beyond the impasse of political philosophy—too quick to ignore the medieval centuries and the Scholastic moment—and to relativize the effacement of the institutional Church from the Renaissance on. In so doing, it rejects the binary opposition between the Church and the state, proposes a new periodization of the “transition to modernity,” and underlines the importance of spatial issues (mainly in terms of represen...
Three Urban Parishes: A Study of Sacred Space
Material Culture Review/Revue de la culture …, 1989
La culture matérielle propre à trois congrégations catholiques ukrainiennes d'Edmonton, en Alberta, reflète des courants de vie paroissiale distincts mais apparentés. L'architecture, l'aménagement intérieur et l'iconographie ont subi des variantes qui soulignent l'importance de l'histoire et de l'évolution du symbolisme culturel, de l'imagination humaine et des traditions.