Architecture of the Sacred
Space, Ritual, and Experience from Classical Greece to Byzantium

This book investigates the role of architecture in the construction of sacred experience in ancient Greek, Roman, Jewish, Christian and Byzantine cultures.

Bonna D. Wescoat (Edited by), Robert G. Ousterhout (Edited by)

9781107429000, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 13 October 2014

410 pages, 151 b/w illus.
24.9 x 16.7 x 2 cm, 0.92 kg

'… this is an outstanding collection of essays, or 'micro-histories', as the editors note, providing both breadth and specificity in its examination of the complex problem of architecture, space, and ritual.' Jessica Paga, Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians

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.

Preface Robert G. Ousterhout and Bonna D. Wescoat
1. Material culture and ritual: state of the question Ja? Elsner
2. Monumental steps and the shaping of ceremony Mary B. Hollinshead
3. Coming and going in the sanctuary of the great gods, Samothrace Bonna D. Wescoat
4. Gateways to the mysteries: the Roman propylon and in the City Eleusinion Margaret M. Miles
5. Architecture and ritual in Ilion, Athens, and Rome C. Brian Rose
6. The same, but different: the temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus through time Ellen Perry
7. Mapping sacrifice on bodies and spaces in ancient Judaism and early Christianity Joan Branham
8. The 'foundation deposit' from the Dura Europos Synagogue reconsidered Jodi Magness
9. Sight lines of sanctity at Late Antique Martyria Ann Marie Yasin
10. The sanctity of place and the sanctity of buildings: Jerusalem vs Constantinople Robert G. Ousterhout
11. Divine light: constructing the immaterial in Byzantine art and architecture Slobodan ?ur?i?
12. Architecture as a definer of sanctity in the monastery tou Libos in Constantinople Vasileios Marinis
Afterword Bonna D. Wescoat and Robert G. Ousterhout.

Subject Areas: Worship, rites & ceremonies [HRLF], Classical history / classical civilisation [HBLA1], History of architecture [AMX], Architecture [AM], History of art: ancient & classical art,BCE to c 500 CE [ACG]