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

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1107008239 ISBN 13: 9781107008236

Publisher: Cambridge University Press, 2012

Synopsis

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.

About this title

About the Authors

Bonna D. Wescoat is Associate Professor of Art History at Emory University, Atlanta and Director of the Institute of Fine Arts excavations at the Sanctuary of the Great Gods, Samothrace, Greece. Her research concentrates on ancient Greek sacred architecture and iconography. Recent works include The Temple of Athena at Assos (2012) and The Monuments of the Eastern Hill (Samothrace) (2015).

Robert G. Ousterhout is Professor of the History of Art at the University of Pennsylvania, where he directs the Center for Ancient Studies. A specialist in Byzantine art and architecture, his research focuses on the vanishing architectural heritage of the Eastern Mediterranean. He is the author of numerous books, including Master Builders of Byzantium, 2nd edition (2008), The Byzantine Monuments of the Evros/Meric River Valley (2007, with Ch. Bakirtzis), and A Byzantine Settlement in Cappadocia, 2nd edition (2011).

Edition details

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Publication date: 2012
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1107008239
• ISBN 13: 9781107008236
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 416
• Editor: Wescoat Bonna D., Ousterhout Robert G.