With the collapse of the Visigothic kingdom, the judges of Catalonia and southern France worked to keep the region’s traditional judicial system operable. Drawing on records of judicial proceedings and church dedications from the ninth century to the end of the eleventh, this dissertation explores how judges devised a liturgically-influenced court strategy to invigorate rulings. They transformed churches into courtrooms. In these spaces, changed by merit of the consecration rite, community awe for the power infused within sacred space could be utilized to achieve consensus around the legitimacy of dispute outcomes. At the height of a tribunal, judges brought litigants and witnesses to altars, believed to be thresholds of Heaven, and compelled them to authenticate their testimony before God and his saints. Thus, officials supplemented human means of enforcement with the supernatural powers permeating sanctuaries. This strategy constitutes a hybridization of codified law and the belief in churches as real sacred spaces, a conception that emerged from the Carolingian liturgical reforms of the ninth century. In practice, it provided courts with a means to enact the mandates from the Visigothic Code and to foster stability. The result was a flexible synthesis of law, liturgy, and sacred space that was in many cases capable of harnessing spiritual and community pressure in legal proceedings.

Diversity of today´s castles and its lucid establishment in tradition or on the other hand the unique of its forms calls up questions, the need to look back and the need of reflection. This contribution is focused on phenomenon of sacral space from the point of view of certain type - opened and closed - especially on co-influencing of light and glass as one of themost important attributes of these archepypes influencing the creation of liturgics area composition.

Niches are common features in the Nabataean landscape (Healey 2001; Starcky 1966: cols. 1008-10; Patrich 1990:50-113). From their frequent appearance in the archeological record, it is evident that the Nabataeans placed great importance on these cultic features. However, very little is known about them. The purpose of this study was to find and record Nabataean cultic niches in a field survey and then to interpret these niches as part of a research design that proposed purposes of niche variation in construction, orientation, and placement of niches on the landscape. My research addresses several neglected issues in the study of cultic niches in Nabataean religion. Robert Wenning has stated there is a need "to research the elements and details of niches in order to understand which detail or combination of elements indicates a specific function or points to an individual deity or certain divine aspect" (Wenning 2001:88). With this research, I hope to determine whether or not certain characteristics of niches can show preferred orientations, indicate a specific function, determine how sanctuaries containing niches were organized, show preferred niche façade ornamentation, or aid in the potential identification of deities.

No description available.

Liberation in White and Black studies, respectively, Washington Memorial Chapel (WMC) and The Church of the Advocate (COA), which are two Episcopal parishes in the Diocese of Pennsylvania. This dissertation investigates the ways that the visual culture of these spaces represents and affects the religious, racial and national self-understanding of these churches and their ongoing operations by offering particular and opposing narrative interpretations of American history. These "sacred spaces" visually describe the United States (implicitly and explicitly) in terms of race and violence in narratives that set them in fundamental opposition to each other, and set a trajectory for each parishes' life that has determined a great deal of its activities over time. I develop this thesis by situating each congregation and its development in the context of the entire history of both the Episcopal Church and Philadelphia as related to race, violence and patriotism. WMC is what historian of religions scholar Jonathan Z. Smith calls a "locative" space and tries to persuade all Americans to patriotically covenant with images of heroic "White" freedom struggle. COA is what Smith calls a "utopian" space and tries to compel its visitors to covenant with a subversive critique of the United States in terms of the parallels between biblical Israel and the African American freedom struggle. My analysis draws especially on the theoretical work of Pierre Bourdieu and David Morgan. A major focus of Pierre Bourdieu's work in both Language and Symbolic Power, and The Logic of Practice is the power of group-making. Group-creating power is often exercised through representations that create a seemingly objective sense of group identity and a social world that is perceived as "natural." David Morgan writes that religious visual culture functions as this sort of political practice through the organization of memory among those who are drawn to "covenant" with images. The Introduction of my dissertation lays out the theoretical approaches informing the visual culture analysis of these Episcopal Churches and raises the significant questions. Three main chapters provide: 1) an historical background of patriotism, race and violence in the Episcopal Church and in Philadelphia in particular, and 2-3) a thorough analysis of the history and visual culture of each space in context. A great deal of my analysis will be interpretive "readings" of the visual culture of the aforementioned churches in their larger contexts to explain how the visual culture represents social classifications to affect the constituents religious, racial and national self-understanding, and their ongoing operations by offering particular and opposing narrative interpretations of American history. The project concludes by summarizing the ways that the analysis of these spaces explicates the thesis with thoughts about the implications for the disciplines involved and further research. / Religion

Archaeologists and historians have sought to understand the architecture of the early church using methods common to their respective fields of inquiry. This has included an approach to architecture which classifies buildings according to type and style. Limitations of both method and evidence has led some scholars to conclude that there was no Christian architecture before A.D. 200. This present study intends to broaden the understanding of architecture beyond mere tectonics and realise its significance as a boundary of place with a view toward examining the foundations of early Christian architecture. Boundary and place are primary components of the cosmos within Judaism. The Hebrews came to understand the world according to a concept of holiness manifested as a scheme of circular boundaries ascending into the presence of God, located within the Temple. As an outgrowth of Judaism, the early Church held similar views of place and boundary which gave them an affinity for the Temple. By understanding architecture as a boundary of place we can connect the sacred places and boundaries of the Jews from Creation to the Land and Temple. The Church proclaimed Jesus as God incarnate and Himself the Temple transformed. The traditional view has been that the synagogue was the connecting link between the Church and the Temple, but the origins and role of the synagogue are now doubted. The predominance of the house in the life and ministry of Jesus combined with its prevalence in the NT and the early Christian writers indicates that the Christians understood sacred place in terms of their domestic reality. The house provided not only a strong ligature connecting Church and Temple, it was also an archetype for the Church’s sacred place and developing architectural boundaries.

This thesis investigates the emergence of Medina in the Ḥijāz as a widely-venerated holy city over the first three Islamic centuries (seventh to ninth centuries CE) within the appropriate historical context, with special attention paid to the town’s ḥaram. It focuses in particular upon the roles played by the Prophet Muḥammad, Umayyad and Abbasid caliphs, and early Islamic legal scholars in this development. It shows that Medina’s emergence as a widely-venerated holy city alongside Mecca was a gradual and contested process, and one that was intimately linked with several important developments concerning legitimate political, religious, and legal authority in the Islamic world. The most important sources for this study have been Medina’s local histories, and Chapter One investigates the development of a tradition of local history-writing there. The Prophet Muḥammad first created a form of sacred space, a ḥaram, at Medina, and Chapter Two seeks to provide the context for this by investigating some forms of sacred and protected space found in the pre-Islamic Arabian Peninsula. Chapter Three then examines a rare early document preserved in the later Islamic sources, which deals in part with Muḥammad’s creation of Medina’s ḥaram, the so-called “Constitution of Medina”, and investigates why and how Muḥammad created that particular form of sacred space at Medina. The remaining two chapters deal with the history of Muḥammad’s ḥaram at Medina after his death as its original raison d’être disappeared. Chapter Four analyses some aspects of Muslim legal scholars’ discussions concerning Medina’s ḥaram, and demonstrates that certain groups disputed its existence. Chapter Five then seeks to understand why caliphs and other scholars invested so heavily in actively promoting its widespread veneration and Medina’s status as a holy city. It concludes that caliphs from the late first/early eighth century patronised Medina to associate themselves with legitimate political authority inherited from Muḥammad, and that from the late second/eighth century certain legal scholars argued for the continued existence of Medina’s ḥaram because of its association with the Prophet and his Companions who had come to be for them the ultimate source of legal authority.

Esta dissertação tem como objetivo identificar a presença do espaço sagrado na Literatura para Crianças e Jovens. Para isso, utilizamos como eixo teóricometodológico propostas sociológicas e antropológicas sobre o sagrado e sua relação com o homem. Como um substrato para mitos, ritos e arquétipos, o sagrado tem permeado a Literatura para Crianças e Jovens, revelando o homem e sua relação com suas crenças. Em diversas obras, evidencia-se como um elemento essencial e norteador do ser que o aceita. Assim, recorrendo ao estudo de temas (tematologia) como método comparativista, objetivamos identificar a configuração do espaço sagrado, pela oralidade, em duas obras: A menina de lá, de Guimarães Rosa, e O beijo da palavrinha, de Mia Couto. Além disso, pelo mesmo método comparativista, analisaremos as obras As Crônicas de Nárnia: o leão, a feiticeira e o guarda-roupa, de C. S. Lewis e Cibermãe, de Alexandre Jardin, com o objetivo de identificar o retorno do sagrado nos dias atuais e, verificar que o sagrado não se limita a épocas, mas até mesmo na modernidade o homem o busca. / This essay aims at identifying the presence of the sacred space in the literature geared at children and young people. For this we used the theoretical - methodological axis as the sociological and anthropological proposals on other sacred and its relationship with man. As a basis for myths, rites and models, the sacred has permeated literature for children and young people, revealing man and his relation to his beliefs. In several literary works, the sacred is highlighted as an essential element and a guide for the man who accepts it. Likewise, resorting to the study of themes as a comparative method, we aim to identify the sacred space by oral sources in two works: A menina de lá, by Guimarães Rosa and O beijo da palavrinha by Mia Couto. According to the same comparative method, we will analyze the following works: The chronicles of Narnia: the lion, the witch and the wardrobe by C.S. Lewis and Cybermother by Alexander Jardin, aiming in both cases to identify the return of the sacred to the present day, observing that the sacred does not limit itself to periods, but man searches for it even in modern days.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Ohio State University, 2007. / Title from first page of PDF file. Includes bibliographical references (p. 205-212).

The concepts and issues surrounding the study of sacred places represent a complex interaction of mindscapes and landscapes. Using as the main examples Stonehenge and the Bighorn Medicine Wheel, this thesis is about these interactions in natural, community sacred places and serves two main purposes. The first is to clarify the meaning of -sacred- and the application of sacred designation to natural places. The second is to explore options for the protection. conservation and restoration of such places. In addition. an interpretation of cultural issues surrounding the understanding of the sacred in place explores and explains the connections between worldviews, stories or mythologies, and sense of place in sacred places so that a better understanding can be reached of the paradigms that underlie our conception of the sacred and of nature. and by extension, the sacred in nature. This in turn serves to illuminate the recommendation of focal restoration techniques to restore sacred places.