The present volume collects most of the contributions to the plenary sessions held at the 24th International Congress of Byzantine Studies, and incisively reflects the ever increasing broadening of ...the very concept of ‘Byzantine Studies’. Indeed, a particularly salient characteristic of the papers presented here is their strong focus on interdisciplinarity and their breadth of scope, both in terms of methodology and content. The cross-pollination between different fields of Byzantine Studies is also a major point of the volume. Archaeology and art history have pride of place; it is especially in archaeological papers that one can grasp the vital importance of the interaction with the so-called hard sciences and with new technologies for contemporary research. This relevance of science and technology for archaeology, however, also applies to, and have significant repercussions in, historical studies, where – for example – the study of climate change or the application of specific software to network studies are producing a major renewal of knowledge. In more traditional subject fields, like literary, political, and intellectual history, the contributions to the present volume offer some important reflections on the connection between Byzantium and other cultures and peoples through the intermediary of texts, stories, diplomacy, trade, and war.
This book delves into the complex relationship between religious imaginaries and the perception of space among followers of Candomblé and Pentecostal churches in Belo Horizonte, Brazil's ...third-largest urban agglomeration. It adopts a dual perspective, examining the broader political, economic, and social dimensions of these religious communities' urbanisation and spatial distribution and their members' individual beliefs and behaviours. Through this approach, the book aims to provide a nuanced and insider's view of these religious positions, challenging our preconceived notions of urban spaces and contributing to the larger discussion of decolonial urban theory and spatialised post-secular thought. This transdisciplinary book will appeal to a broad range of researchers, particularly those interested in urban and religious studies. Its strong spatial perspective makes it attractive to architects and urban designers. It will be of interest to those in human geography, urban planning, design, architecture, political science, religious studies, and culture studies. The Open Access version of this book, available at http://www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial (CC-BY-NC) 4.0 license.
Images of Change focuses on the visual propaganda employed by Catholic popes in Rome during the time of Tridentine Reform. In 1563, at the Council of Trent, the Catholic Church decided to reform its ...own use of imagery, in response to Protestant criticism. This volume examines how different sixteenth-century popes dealt with church reform by looking at the variety of artworks that were commissioned particularly in the city of Rome, the immediate sphere of influence of papal power. Based on original research in the Vatican archives, the book argues that because of the contradictory media strategies employed by individual popes, the papacy began to lose its spiritual and temporal influence and power. This book will appeal to students and scholars alike interested in the Roman Catholic Church in and around the sixteenth century, as well as Early Modern religious reform and Papal influence.
The role played by women in the evolution of religious art and architecture has been largely neglected. This study of upper-class women in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries corrects that ...oversight, uncovering the active role they undertook in choosing designs, materials, and locations for monuments, commissioning repairs and additions to many parish churches, chantry chapels, and almshouses characteristic of the English countryside. Their preferred art, Barbara J. Harris shows, reveals their responses to the religious revolution and signifies their preferred identities.
The Byzantine cathedral of Hagia Sophia has been a source of wonder and fascination since its sixth-century construction. It was the premier monument of the Byzantine capital, Constantinople, and ...remains one of the most recognisable symbols of modern Istanbul. Often seen as encapsulating Byzantine history and culture, the building has been the subject of much scholarly interest since the Renaissance. However, while almost all previous archaeological work has focussed on the church itself, the surrounding complex of ecclesiastical buildings has been largely neglected. The research project presented here (co-directed by the authors) is the first to focus on the archaeology of the immediate environs of the church in order to understand the complex as a whole. Previously unrecorded material includes parts of the Patriarchal complex, from which the Orthodox Church was governed for almost a millennium, what may be the ‘Great Baptistery’ north of the church, and what are perhaps the first fragments of the fourth-century phase of the cathedral yet identified. The discovery of an unrecognised porch, surviving to its full height within the standing building, changes the known plan of the famous sixth-century church. This new information provides fresh evidence about the appearance and function of the complex, illustrating its similarities to, and dissimilarities from, episcopal centres elsewhere in the Byzantine world. Combined with other archaeological sources, these discoveries enable us to place the sixth-century cathedral in its urban context and to reconsider what Hagia Sophia can tell us about the wider Byzantine world.
How religious institutions used landscapes and architecture to express their religious and social ideologies
The Archaeology of Protestant Landscapes focuses on three religious institutions in ...the US South in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries: St. Paul’s Parish Church in coastal South Carolina, St. Luke’s Episcopal Church in central Alabama, and Cane Hill College in Northwest Arkansas. Drawing from archaeological surveys and excavations, artifact analysis, archival research, geophysical testing, and architectural information on religious structures, Kimberly Pyszka offers case studies of these institutions, which were located in developing communities that varied socially, politically, and economically.
Pyszka uses these case studies to demonstrate that select religious institutions used and modified natural landscape features to create cultural landscapes to express their ideology, identity, goals, and social, religious, and political power. She notes that where those structures were constructed, how they sat on the landscape, their architectural style, and their overall visual appearance were well-considered decisions made by religious leaders to benefit their organizations, communities, and, sometimes, themselves.
Pyszka also uses these case studies to highlight the social roles that religious organizations played in the development of communities. She points to landscape decisions—specifically to how the architectural design of religious structures was used, intentionally or not, to unite people, often those of differing religious backgrounds—as contributing to the creation of a common identity among people living in new and still-growing settlements, aiding in community development. This book contributes to the growing body of work within historical archaeology on churches, churchyards, and cemeteries and to the increasing awareness among archaeologists of how these sites contribute to questions of identity, consumerism, trade, and colonialism.
This book acts as a stimulus to further debate and discussion about the archaeology and architecture of the medieval diocese of Llandaff. It presents work at Cardiff and Skenfrith castles and focuses ...on buildings at Caldicot and Raglan.
This work of reflection investigates the meaning of the word landscape and its value in the architectural work. It is based on the research carried out on different landscape concepts defined from ...the perceptual processes of man, on the imaginary ones that he forms as a product of those processes and the incidence of those imaginary in his cultural formation, and the behavior he performs in the world from the incorporation of those imaginary. In this particular case, and with the objective of reflecting on some of the notions from which a building is designed, the architectural work is considered as an intermediary between the subject that inhabits it and the environment that contains it, conceived as a device for provoke sensations through images projected by the architect. A synthesis of the history of the landscape in Occident and in Orient prefaces the work and defines the theoretical framework of this work, while exposing and documenting the concepts that are handled here. From these concepts and as a conclusion, we reflect on the contributions made by the Church in Water, designed and built by the Japanese architect Tadao Ando, to this particular approach to the subject.
This is a study of a process of architectural analysis on Gillespie, Kidd & Coia (1927–1987), an architectural practice often famed for their original approach, especially for their longstanding ...client, the Catholic Archdiocese of Glasgow. It is primarily concerned with the results of their approach over many years; of the effects or trends apparent in their work as an oeuvre, rather than with their initial architectural intentions; and builds on the work of other scholars by discussing the firm's work within the context of the twentieth century's rather fluid liturgical landscape. An alternative method is suggested for reading their ecclesiastical architecture, based not only on difference within their work, but also on its interconnections.
The Unitarian religious tradition was a product of the same eighteenth-century democratic ideals that fueled the American Revolution and informed the founding of the United States. Its liberal ...humanistic principles influenced institutions such as Harvard University and philosophical movements like Transcendentalism. Yet, its role in the history of American architecture is little known and studied.In American Unitarian Churches, Ann Marie Borys argues that the progressive values and identity of the Unitarian religion are intimately intertwined with ideals of American democracy and visibly expressed in the architecture of its churches. Over time, church architecture has continued to evolve in response to developments within the faith, and many contemporary projects are built to serve religious, practical, and civic functions simultaneously. Focusing primarily on churches of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, including Frank Lloyd Wright's Unity Temple and Louis Kahn's First Unitarian Church, Borys explores building histories, biographies of leaders, and broader sociohistorical contexts. As this essential study makes clear, to examine Unitarianism through its churches is to see American architecture anew, and to find an authentic architectural expression of American democratic identity.
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