A Thousand Fates explores the afterlife of medieval monasticism in England and Wales. A thousand years of monasticism came to an abrupt end in the mid-sixteenth century with the Dissolution of the Monasteries. At its peak two hundred years earlier, many people chose the contemplative life, while the rich sought salvation through the foundation or embellishment of religious houses. Much of the nation’s wealth was locked into these complexes through elaborate rebuilding, gifts of precious objects and flourishing libraries of rare books. Then in just four years all of the eight hundred plus houses were closed and ten thousand people dispersed, with the monastic fortune liquidated and passed to the crown. Today we are left with echoes of a time dominated by an enclosed elite, their homes repurposed or derelict or obliterated. Some of these foundations still thrive as churches, schools, homes or tourist attractions. Others have left little physical trace, the casual viewer ignorant of their existence. A Thousand Fates is not an account of why the monasteries closed or what happened to the people displaced. Instead it focuses on the monastic buildings and their numerous fates and brings life to their stories.

Religious Architecture in Latium and Etruria, c. 900-500 BC presents the first comprehensive treatment of cult buildings in western central Italy from the Iron Age to the Archaic Period. By analysing the archaeological evidence for the form of early religious buildings and their role in ancient communities, it reconstructs a detailed history of early Latial and Etruscan religious architecture that brings together the buildings and the people who used them. The first part of the study examines the processes by which religious buildings changed from huts and shrines to monumental temples, and explores apparent differences between these processes in Latium and Etruria. The second part analyses the broader architectural, religious, and topographical contexts of the first Etrusco-Italic temples alongside possible rationales for their introduction. The result is a new and extensive account of when, where, and why monumental cult buildings became features of early central Italic society.

Following on from 100 Buildings 100 Years and 100 Houses 100 Years, this book illustrates and describes 100 churches and chapels built in the UK since 1914, charting the development of buildings for worship. In this period concrete and steel gave a new freedom to construction, while new ideas about how congregations could participate in services changed assumptions about traditional layouts, bringing celebrants and people closer together. The century saw dynamic churches in dramatic shapes of all sizes thanks to ambitious engineering, and brilliant colour from new forms of stained glass, murals and sculpture. Architects whose work is included here range from Basil Spence and Edward Maufe, designers of major cathedrals, to the radical Gillespie, Kidd and Coia whose brutalist seminary lies abandoned near Dumbarton. The book provides biographies of major designers; articles on glass, fittings, and on the synagogues, mosques and temples that play an intrinsic and important part in worship in Britain today. Contributors include architectural historians Elain Harwood, Alan Powers and Clare Price. Beautiful photography throughout showcases the very best of British church design, whether it is the minimal symmetry of a timber-framed altar, or light streaming in through a multi-coloured stained glass panel.

What buried secret lies beneath the stones of one of England's greatest former churches and shrines, the Benedictine Abbey of Bury St Edmunds? The search for the final resting place of King Edmund has led to this site, beneath which Francis Young argues the lost king's remains are waiting to be found. Edmund: In Search of England's Lost King explores the history of the martyred monarch of East Anglia and England's first patron saint, showing how he became a pivotal figure around whom Saxons, Danes and Normans all rallied. Young also examines Edmund's legacy in the centuries since his death at the hands of marauding Vikings in the 9th century. In doing so, this fascinating book points to the imminent rediscovery of the ruler who created England.

Never before available in paperback, J. M. C. Toynbee's study is the most comprehensive book on Roman burial practices. Ranging throughout the Roman world from Rome to Pompeii, Britain to Jerusalem--Toynbee's book examines funeral practices from a wide variety of perspectives. First, Toynbee examines Roman beliefs about death and the afterlife, revealing that few Romans believed in the Elysian Fields of poetic invention. She then describes the rituals associated with burial and mourning: commemorative meals at the gravesite were common, with some tombs having built-in kitchens and rooms where family could stay overnight. Toynbee also includes descriptions of the layout and finances of cemeteries, the tomb types of both the rich and poor, and the types of grave markers and monuments as well as tomb furnishings.

Sacred spaces exemplify some of the most exciting and challenging architecture today. Designing Sacred Spaces tells the inside story of seven architecture firms and their approaches to designing churches, mosques, synagogues and temples, monasteries and retreats. Twenty beautifully illustrated case studies located in Asia, Europe, and North America are showcased alongside discussions with the designers into concept and design development, materiality, and spatial analysis. Complementing these are essays on the cultural, historical, and theoretical meaning and importance of sacred spaces. By exploring the way we see religion and how we understand secular and sacred space, Designing Sacred Spaces reveals how we see ourselves and how we see others. A tour-de-force of first-person narratives, research, and illustrations, this book is a vital desk reference.

This engaging study introduces the reader to one of the greatest achievements of Western art: the climactic phase of Gothic architecture in the first half of the thirteenth century. Through a comparative analysis of the cathedrals of Chartres, Reims, and Amiens, the author illuminates the technical, theological, artistic, and social factors that formed the High Gothic synthesis. Drawing on a lifetime of scholarship, he successively characterizes the different parts of the Gothic cathedral and describes the human context of the three great buildings.

English Church Monuments in the Middle Ages offers a comprehensive survey of English church monuments from the pre-Conquest period to the early sixteenth century. Ground-breaking in its treatment of the subject in an historical context, it explores medieval monuments both in terms of their social meaning and the role that they played in the religious strategies of the commemorated.
Attention is given to the production of monuments, the pattern of their geographical distribution, the evolution of monument types, and the role of design in communicating the monument's message. A major theme is the self-representation of the commemorated as reflected in the main classes of effigy-those of the clergy, the knights and esquires, and the lesser landowner or burgess class, while the effigial monuments of women are examined from the perspective of the construction of gender.
While seeking to use monuments as windows onto the experiences and lives of the commemorated, it also exploits documentary sources to show what they can tell us about the influences that helped shape the monuments. An innovative chapter looks at the construction of identity in inscriptions, showing how the liturgical role of the monument limited the opportunities for expressions of self. Nigel Saul seeks to place monuments at the very centre of medieval studies, highlighting their importance not only for the history of sculpture and design, but also for social and religious history more generally.

The profusion of medieval churches in Norfolk provides not only examples of beautiful church architecture, but also records life in their communities and offers an insight into the history of medieval England. The third revised and enlarged edition of The Guide to Norfolk Churches contains an encyclopaedic glossary and a detailed index, which contrbute to the comprehensive survey provided by this guide. This indespensible guide to the 'living' medieval churches of Norfolk helps the visitor to understand both the general features of churches and the unique aspects of those in different areas. The guide is generously illustrated with photographs, line drawings and a detailed map to aid in locating each church within the county. The expanded reference section is designed to answer a host of questions which may tease the church visitor. For example, what symbols are used to represent particular saints? Why do so many Norfolk churches stand isolated from their villages? And why does the pagan Green Man find a place in our Christian churches? This book provides the answers to these and other questions. Written by enthusiasts for both the churches and the county in which they stand, the great appeal of this guide is that, once the code of church architecture has been broken and the language learned, every church, be it ever so humble, is shown to be unique, with its own story to offer. This guide provides the key. "In this, his revised guide to Norfolk churches, Mr Mortlock has provided us with a fascinating and illuminating description of each and every one he has visited. Armed with this guide the visitor cannot fail to enjoy exploring our lovely churches and having done so, it is my earnest hope that he or she will be inspired to lend their support to these marvellous symbols of our heritage." From the Foreword by the Countess of Leicester

This anthology collects, substaniates, and demonstrates the importance of the religious imagination within Western modern and contemporary architecture.

The essays written expressly for the anthology take a critical look at the relationship between religion and architecture in the twentieth century, as well as giving a brief look at the pre-history of the modern movement and its relationship to religion and architecture. These are grounded by and help to explicate the reprinted essays that are culled from the last one hundred years.

This is an important introduction to the religious imagination in architectural thought of the last one hundred years, and to the interdisciplinary discourse that examines how different disciplines express abstract concepts such as faith, spirit, God and knowledge. It makes essential reading for any architect, aspiring or practising, delving deeper into the meaning of architectural practice.

Al-Masjid an-Nabawi, the great Mosque of Madinah containing the tomb of the Prophet himself, is one of the two holiest sites in the Islamic world. Since the Prophet's death thirteen centuries ago, the mosque has spread outwards from the core of the holy city. At night, it radiates a powerful light. The tomb itself within the Prophet's Chamber is a point of pilgrimage for visitors who come in their millions every year from across the globe. Moath Alofi, who was born and raised in the city, has witnessed this devotion to the Prophet all his life. It is natural that Nabawi should become the title and subject of his first photographic book. From that holy axis, he has travelled into the greater space of Madinah Province and has photographed both the desert culture and the vanishing fabric of the city and its surrounding neighbourhoods. Madinah, like its holy counterpart, Mecca, is a city in a constant state of transition. The role of the photographer as an observer of change becomes all the more important as the pace of transition inevitably escalates. This book, Nabawi, is a record of the daily life of one of the great holy sites, and a study in humanity. All manner of expression and experience are found in the faces of the pilgrims - the old and young men, women and children - who are touched by the spirit of the place and by the devotion they have so faithfully expressed.

Simon Jenkins has travelled the length and breadth of England to select his thousand best churches. Organised by county, each church is described - often with delightful asides - and given a star-rating from one to five. All of the county sections are prefaced by a map locating each church, and lavishly illustrated with colour photos from the Country Life archive. Jenkins contends that these churches house a gallery of vernacular art without equal in the world. Here, he brings that museum to public attention.

The Pantheon is one of the most important architectural monuments of all time. Thought to have been built by Emperor Hadrian in approximately 125 AD on the site of an earlier, Agrippan-era monument, it brilliantly displays the spatial pyrotechnics emblematic of Roman architecture and engineering. The Pantheon gives an up-to-date account of recent research on the best preserved building in the corpus of ancient Roman architecture from the time of its construction to the twenty-first century. Each chapter addresses a specific fundamental issue or period pertaining to the building; together, the essays in this volume shed light on all aspects of the Pantheon's creation, and establish the importance of the history of the building to an understanding of its ancient fabric and heritage, its present state, and its special role in the survival and evolution of ancient architecture in modern Rome.

What happens when a monotheistic, foreign religion needs a space in which to worship in China, a civilisation with a building tradition that has been largely unchanged for several millennia? The story of this extraordinary convergence begins in the 7th century and continues under the Chinese rule of Song and Ming, and the non-Chinese rule of the Mongols and Manchus, each with a different political and religious agenda. The author shows that mosques, and ultimately Islam, have survived in China because the Chinese architectural system, though often unchanging, is adaptable: it can accommodate the religious requirements of Buddhism, Daoism, Confucianism, and Islam.

In this book, a distinguished team of authors explores the way space, place, architecture, and ritual interact to construct sacred experience in the historical cultures of the eastern Mediterranean. Essays address fundamental issues and features that enable buildings to perform as spiritually transformative spaces in ancient Greek, Roman, Jewish, early Christian, and Byzantine civilizations. Collectively they demonstrate the multiple ways in which works of architecture and their settings were active agents in the ritual process. Architecture did not merely host events; rather, it magnified and elevated them, interacting with rituals facilitating the construction of ceremony. This book examines comparatively the ways in which ideas and situations generated by the interaction of place, built environment, ritual action, and memory contributed to the cultural formulation of the sacred experience in different religious faiths.

Most of the seven million people who visit the cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris each year probably do not realize that the legendary gargoyles adorning this medieval masterpiece were not constructed until the nineteenth century. The first comprehensive history of these world-famous monsters, "The Gargoyles of Notre Dame" argues that they transformed the iconic thirteenth-century cathedral into a modern monument. Michael Camille begins his long-awaited study by recounting architect Eugene Viollet-le-Duc's ambitious restoration of the structure from 1843 to 1864, when the gargoyles were designed, sculpted by the little-known Victor Pyanet, and installed. These gargoyles, Camille contends, were not mere avatars of the Middle Ages, but rather fresh creations - symbolizing an imagined past - whose modernity lay precisely in their nostalgia. He goes on to map the critical reception and many-layered afterlives of these chimeras, notably in the works of such artists and writers as Charles Meryon, Victor Hugo, and photographer Henri Le Secq. Tracing their eventual evolution into icons of high kitsch, Camille ultimately locates the gargoyles' place in the twentieth-century imagination, exploring interpretations by everyone from Winslow Homer to the Walt Disney Company. Lavishly illustrated with more than three hundred images of its monumental yet whimsical subjects, "The Gargoyles of Notre Dame" is a must-read for historians of art and architecture and anyone whose imagination has been sparked by the lovable monsters gazing out over Paris from one of the world's most renowned vantage points.

The Nasrid builders of the Alhambra - the best-preserved medieval Muslim palatial city - were so exacting that some of their work could not be fully explained until the invention of fractal geometry. Their design principles have been obscured, however, by the loss of all archival material. This book resolves that impasse by investigating the neglected, interdisciplinary contexts of medieval poetics and optics and through comparative study of Islamic court ceremonials. This reframing enables the reconstruction of the underlying, integrated aesthetic, focusing on the harmonious interrelationship between diverse artistic media --architecture, poetry and textiles -- in the experience of the beholder, resulting in a new understanding of the Alhambra.

Invisible City analyzes conventual architecture in terms of the politics of sight, "the optics of power", the relationship between flesh and stone. It uncovers the connections between the bodies of the nuns and the walls that housed them, presenting the architecture of female convents as a metaphor for the body of the aristocratic female virgin nun.

This book is a revised edition of a classic work of scholarship, with new Foreword, Appendix, and updated Index and bibliography. Dr Yates discusses the liturgical arrangement of Anglican churches in the period between the Reformation and the Oxford Movement, challenging many widely held assumptions and prejudices.