medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
It seems to me that you might want to do something comparative.
Contrast a small parish church, a cathedral, and a monastic church of
some kind. Different structuress, different settings, different
congregations, different experiences.
Andrew E. Larsen
On Jul 26, 2009, at 4:15 PM, jbugslag <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and
> culture
>
> Steve,
> A contemporary equivalent question might be: what happens in an
> office building? They're
> all office buildings, right? So, why shouldn't someone in another
> culture assume that the
> same thing gos on in all of them. As it happens, it matters if it
> is a bank, construction,
> insurance or some other kind of office building. Same with medieval
> churches. How a
> church functioned depends on whether it was a cathedral, a monastic
> church (large or small,
> male or female - they could be quite different), a collegiate
> church, a parish church, a
> mendicant church, a well-endowed or not so well endowed church.
> Each of these types of
> churches, as well, catered to more than one constituency: it
> mattered whether one were a
> peasant, an urban artisan or trader, a noble, a priest, a monk, a
> nun, a leper, etc. - not to
> mention what specific relationship one might have had with the
> church. It mattered whether it
> was an urban or rural church, or whether some degree of pilgrimage
> was attached to it. It
> mattered whether one were a founder or benefactor, whether one's
> family or confraternity
> had a chapel in the church, whether one had some other particular
> relation with the church.
> There were a lot of variables of that kind, so that your question
> turns out to be quite
> complicated. But that's probably not what you wanted to hear!
> Cheers,
> Jim
>
> On 26 Jul 2009 at 9:26, Steve Cartwright wrote:
>
>> medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and
>> culture
>>
>> Colleagues,
>>
>> Every year I teach a survey course on the history of western
>> humanities, from the ancient world through the Middles Ages--sort of
>> Western Civ without the politics, economics, etc. I get to spend
>> three
>> precious weeks on medieval arts, ideas, and culture. This includes
>> discussing medieval church architecture, particularly church
>> architecture. For years I've been discussing the differences between
>> Romanesque and Gothic, and showing pictures of the various styles,
>> the
>> stained glass, the sculptures, etc., and putting them into the
>> context
>> of the allegorical world view of medieval Europeans. But I've always
>> felt something has been missing, namely, just how all the bits and
>> pieces of a medieval church--the sculptural program, the stained
>> glass
>> program, the layout, the sacred geometry, etc., all fit together into
>> an ultimate combination of form and function.
>>
>> What I want to discuss with my students is just how a medieval church
>> building "functioned," or worked, namely, when a medieval churchgoer
>> or pilgrim entered a church and saw the whole thing, what did s/he
>> think? How did the building *as an integrated whole* function to
>> teach
>> or inspire a worshipper? I'm going for the Gestalt here. I already
>> discuss such things as the "mysticism of light," the church building
>> as a microcosm of the universe, an allegory of salvation, and a
>> foretaste of heaven. I want to discuss more fully how that entire,
>> complex form functioned, how it all affected the medieval churchgoer.
>>
>> Thanks for any suggestions you might have about this!
>>
>> Steve Cartwright
>> Western Michigan University
>>
>> ***
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