Sacred Space

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Sacred Space
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A typology of sacred place

• Sacred
• Ecclesiastical (houses of god)
• Houses of God (Church, Temples, etc.)
• Gateways, altars, paths, shrines
• Pilgrimage routes
• Domestic
• Homes, gardens, lawns
• Objects symbols
• Civic
• Monuments
• Memorials
• Entire cities (Jerusalem, Rome Temple city
  complex)
• Natural
• Mountains, springs, rivers, etc.
• Profane

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Ritual/Architectural Priorities (Lindsay Jones)

• I. Orientation
• - homology
• - conventions
• - astronomy
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• II. Commemoration
• - divinity
• - sacred history
• - politics
• - the dead
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• III. Ritual Context
• - theatre
• - contemplative
• - spectacle
• - propitiation
• - sancturary

Egyptian Pyramids
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Rise and Fall of Ancient Israel

• Birth of a nation relation to land
• Spatial metaphors, images
• Exile diaspora home/geopiety
• The Lord God will restore your fortunes, and
  have compassion upon you, and he will gather you
  again from all the peoples where the Lord you God
  has scattered you the Lord God will bring you
  into the land which your ancestors possessed,
  that you may possess it and he will make you
  more prosperous than your ancestors (Deut
  303-5).
• Two great national disasters
• 536 BCE Babylonian Conquest Ezekiel
  (visionary temple)
• Return second temple (Herod exapnds, lavishes
  attention)
• Rome, 70CE - Diaspora

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Rivers of Babylon

• Psalm 137
• By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat
  down.Yes, we wept, when we remembered Zion.We
  hung our harps on the willows there.For there
  those who led us captive asked us for
  songs.Those who tormented us demanded songs of
  joySing us one of the songs of Zion!How can
  we sing Yahwehs song in a foreign land?If I
  forget you, O Jerusalem,may my right hand forget
  its cunning.May my tongue stick to the roof of
  my mouth if I do not remember youif I do not
  prefer Jerusalem above my highest joy.Remember,
  Yahweh, the children of Edom,on the day of
  Jerusalemwho said, Burn it down!Burn it even
  to its foundation!Daughter of Babylon, doomed
  to destruction,he will be happy who rewards
  you,as you have served us.Happy shall he
  be,who takes your little ones and dashes them on
  the rock.

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Arad Temple Complex
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Eliade
Sacred and Profane The ark of the Lord of Israel,
containing the stone tablets of the Ten
Commandments, was kept hidden in the tabernacle
(or tent of worship) because it was the place of
communion with God (Exodus 2522). Yet the high
priest was warned to take ritual precautions,
when he entered the Holy of Holies once a year on
the Day of Atonement, so that his body could be
retrieved if he were struck dead in the encounter
with the presence of God (Exodus 283335,
4243).Because religious people desire to live
near the center of the world, the navel of the
earth (44), they build even their houses as
microcosms. To be in such a home, then, is to be
at the center of the universe, with access to the
transcendent. Homologies Since many different
forms of building can reflect the cosmic model,
however, religious people recognize a
multiplicity of centers. They seek to reiterate
the image of the world in the settling of
territory, as well as in the construction of
cities, temples, and dwellings. Eliade concludes
In extremely varied cultural contexts, we
constantly find the same cosmo-logical schema and
the same ritual scenario settling in a territory
is equivalent to founding a world (47).

• hierophany manifestation of the sacred a
  hierophany is a mythico-historical event
  revealing some attitude a people have toward the
  sacred theophanies, signs, thresholds, gateways
  in the western monotheisms, the holiness of a
  place tends to be a quality acquired through
  becoming in history a place of divine
  manifestation rather than an inherent quality it
  has had from primeval times, in the landscape
• axis mundi - gateway between this world and the
  realm of the sacred
• imago mundi - an image of the world
• homologized space imago mundi - architectural
  space resembles the sacred likeness in
  structure consecration repetition of cosmology
  (tabernacle modeled on, for example, heaven

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Critique of Holy/Sacred Sites

• God is really present in particular places-as we
  have noted earlier BUT there is another strand
  in Hebrew thinking that claims that God will not
  dwell in temples
• God's real presence and his equally real freedom
  to be absent from his temple
• Solomon declares, 'I have surely built thee a
  house of habitation, a place for thee to dwell in
  forever' (1 Kgs 8.13), but-in almost the same
  breath-questions that same programme 'But will
  God in very deed dwell on the earth? Behold,
  heaven and the heaven of heavens cannot contain
  thee how much less this house that I have
  builded!' (v. 27).
• Prophetic literature - a critique of particular
  holy places. Such a critique undermines their
  very status as holy places.
• It cannot be denied that 'the place' was chosen
  by Yahweh but it is possible to criticize what
  the place has become, and attack that which
  denies its legitimacy as a holy place now. This
  is a prophetic action.

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Politics/Contestation

• Critiques of de-politicized, essentialized work
  of Eliade
• David Chidester Edward Linenthal
• emphasizing a situational analysis. (Emile
  Durkeheimsacred representative of social
  structures, hierarchical, stratified, social
  power sacred is produced. Primary means
  narrative, material culture, ritual).
• Strategic concerns appropriation, exclusion
  (dominate space by advancing special interests or
  notion of purity) inversion, hybridization
  (strategies of resistance).

Eliade Chidester and Linenthal
Sacred space set apart Sacred space entangled
Sacred space (center) allows for passage mediates mythological or theological levels or domains Sacred space mediates other social realities political, gender, economic hierarchical relations of domination subordination
Sacred space is a revelation (hierophany) Sacred space the product of symbolic labor it is made, and therefore interested contested space an arena of signs symbols
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Jerusalem
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II. Commemoration - divinity - sacred
history - politics - the dead
Civil Religion
Horatio Greenhough, 1841 - mixed reviews in
Smithsonian since 1908.
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Monuments and Ideology
Monumentality always embodies and imposes a
clearly intelligible message. It say what it
wishes to sayyet it hides a good deal more.
- Henri Lefebvre
historical monuments and civic spaces as
didactic artifacts were treated with curatorial
reverence. They were visualized best if seen as
isolated ornaments jewels of the city to be
place in scenographic arrangements and
icongraphically composed to civilize and elevate
the aesthetic tastes and morals of an aspiring
urban elite. This was an architecture or
ceremonial power whose monuments spoke of
exemplary deeds, national unity, and industrial
glory. Christine Boyer, City of Collective
Memory
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Wittenberg Town Map
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Schlosskirche (Castle Church - politics)
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