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Please arrange all bibliographic references alphabetically by author:
Alcock, S. 1993. "The Sacred Landscape," in Graecia Capta: The Landscapes of Roman Greece Cambridge University Press: 172-214
--The organizing theme for this book as a whole is the way in which spatial organization and re-organization reveal relationships of power and influence. In her chapter on the sacred landscape she uses this particular frame to explore issues of power and dominance brought to the Greek world with Roman hegemony. She taxonomically divides the ways in which Greek cults were treated into: 'displaced cults' defined as those displaced through the process of conquest and incorporation; 'centralized cults' which are situated in urban centers; and 'rural cults' are those which were used by the Greeks to maintain a connection to the sancuaries in the countryside that still held symbolic value for them. While in this chapter she explores this issue in its religious/cultic capacity, her larger argument is that looking at the complex ways in which spaces are used and manipulated provides a window into power relations and instances of resistance. (KFW)
Bartman, Elizabeth, “Sculptural Collection and Display in the Private Realm,” Roman Art in the Private Sphere: New Perspectives on the Architecture and Décor of the Domus, Villa, and Insula, 71-88. Edited by Elaine K. Gazda. Michigan: University of Michigan Press, 1991.
--An interesting piece on the emergence of art collection among elites in the Roman period. She offers interesting insights into the logic driving the pieces that were chosen and how they were arranged to create new contexts of meaning. Useful for thinking about processes of desacralization and the ways in which architecture and objects work in concert to form particular sorts of spaces. (HW)
Bassett, Sarah, The Urban Image of Late Antique Constantinople. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004.
--Bassett's work on the formation of Constantinople (by Constantine in the mid-4C) focuses uniquely on the emperor's strategies for creating a meaningful urban space capable of functioning as the new capital of the Roman Empire. She poses interesting questions about how connections are forged between culturally meaningful places, such as powerful cities and religious sites of the Greco-Roman world and the Empire's new capital city. (HW)
Beard, Mary, John North and Simon Price. Religions of Rome. 2 vols. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998.
--This book provides an excellent overview of Roman religion, from early Rome through Republican and Imperial Rome to Late Antique Rome. While not directly focused on the question of “sacred space” or ritual, this book nonetheless includes many discussions on and insights into these topics. Throughout the book, the authors often discuss religion in terms of its interaction with or effect on the contemporary political life. (CM)
Casey, Edward 1997. The Fate of Place: A philosophical history. U. California Press.
--This dense but extremely rich monograph is a foundational reference for the philosophical debates about space and its ontological and epistemological renderings in the Western tradition. Ultimately Casey makes his case for a phenomenological approach that he argues will rescue place from space and return the body to its position of centrality in our analytical framework.
Casey, E. S. 2001. “Body, Self, and Landscape: A Geophilosophical Inquiry into the Place-World” in Adams, P. S. Hoelscher, and K. Till (eds.), Textures of Place: exploring humanist geographies. University of Minnesota Press.
--This concise chapter echoes the sentiments from his 1997 publication: he argues against the conflation of place and space, such that space serves in a locatory capacity and place is the immediate ambiance of the lived body. Ultimately, he argues that place and self are fundamentally coextensive with the body and bodily experience functioning as the tangible mediator between the self and the place-world. (KFW)
de Blaauw, Sible. “Contrasts in Processional Liturgy: A Typology of Outdoor Processions in Twelfth-Century Rome” in Art, Liturgie et Ceremonie au Moyen Age. Rome: Viella, 2002.
---This article examines two major types of processions that occured in twelfth century Rome, the triumphal procession and the participatory procession. De Blaauw provides an excellent comparison of the structure and focus of these processions, and makes several important comments about the mobility of liturgical actions during procession. In this way, de Blaauw thinks about the sacred spaces of Rome through their moving processions and thereby provides an important example in which sacred space can be enacted through movement, rather than understanding sacred space as a fixed locality. (EAF)
Favro,D.1994. The Street Triumphant: The Urban Impact of Roman Triumphal Parades. in Celik, Z., D. Favro, R. Ingersoll (eds.), Streets: Critical Perspectives on Public Space
--In this chapter Favro examines the ways in which the city shaped and was shaped by Roman triumphal processions. Through this case study she touches on themes of historical topography, the social construction of space, demarcating sacred (or perhaps more appropriate, heterotopic) space by means of architectural embellishment, ephemeral constructions, costume, and social hierarchy. (KFW)
Fassler, Margot. “Adventus at Chartres: Ritual Models for Major Processions.” In "Ceremonial Culture in Pre-Modern Europe", ed. Nicholas Howe. Notre Dame, Indiana, University of Indiana Press, 2007.
In this article, Margot Fassler considers the performative qualities of the adventus, or entrance ceremonies, at Chartres and thier interactions with the physical space of the cathedral. These adventus ceremonies were appropriated into liturgical practice and their rituals can be witnessed in the major festal processions of the liturgical year at Chartres Cathedral (Purification, Palm Sunday and Ascension). Fasler's analysis is especially useful for her recognition not only of the structure of these processions but their affective qualities upon both participant and viewer. Most signficantly, in these processions, both crowd and participants re-enact sacred Biblical history. Therefore, via the actions and reactions of the adventus procession, Chartres becomes the Temple of Jerusalem through communal memory. Such an argument provides a nice comparison to Jonathan Z. Smith's argument for the ritual re-emplacement of Jerusalem through liturgical ritual, however this relationship is not explicitly acknowledged. (EAF)
Grant, E. "Much Ado About Nothing: Theories of Space and Vacuum from the Middle Ages to the Scientific Revolution." Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981.
--From a history of science perspective, Grant discusses the concepts of space and the controversy over the existence of empty space (vacuum) in Western thought. From Aristotle to Newton, Grant raises the questions of the meaning of space in relationship to Western thought, the questions of whether space is something (a plenum) or whether the cosmos consists of particles in empty space(atomism). (CM)
Insoll, T. 2004. "Archaeology, Ritual, Religion." London and New York: Routledge
--In this small book, Insoll sets out a herculean task: to address the issues of ritual and religion in arhcaeological thought and practice (both past and present). He divides the work into three major sections: Introduction to the theme, the History of research, and Contemporary approaches (within which he also discusses case studies and outlines potential future directions). This work treats past approaches critically and approaches the study of ritual and religion with the understanding that it is not unproblematic. (KFW)
Kertzer, David. 1988. Ritual, Power, Politics. Yale U. Press.
--This seminal work by brown's very own provost is a valuable resource for understanding how anthropology has used the concept of ritual not simply as a metaphor but as an analytical category for dealing with social practice outside the domain of "religion" in the post-enlightenment world. In essence he offers a compelling analysis of how ritual has been used for the politcal legitimization of the status quo but also for the ways in which ritual can have revolutionary power in the face of authoritarianism.
Kinney, Dale, “Rape or Restitution of the Past? Interpreting Spolia,” The Art of Interpreting, 50-67. Edited by Susan C. Scott. University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1995.
--An interesting piece in which Kinney attempts to formulate theoretical approaches to the practice of spoliation. Although his emphasis is on the escalation of the practice during the Constantinian era, particularly in reference to large-scale architectural spoliation and incorporation, his theoretical insights extend to the construction of much later Christian monuments from the spolia of Greco-Roman religious buildings. (HW)
Krautheimer, Richard. "Rome: Profile of a City, 312-1308." Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980.
--In the opening chapters of this book, Krautheimer discusses the interaction between pagan and Christian space in Rome. The first chapter presents a topographical tour of Rome in the early fourth century, mapping out and focusing on the sacralization of the monumental spaces, civic and religious, of the pagan city. From the use of Roman spolia in Christian basilicas, to the use of classical vocabulary in Christian art, to the reuse of pagan temples as Christian churches, Krautheimer analyzes the interweaving of sacred and civic space. Krautheimer further focuses on the kinds of statements that large, sacred Christian basilicas or burial complexes can make about the topography and ideology of the pre-Constantinian city (CM).
Marlowe, Elizabeth. "Framing the Sun: The Arch of Contsantine and the Roman Cityscape." Art Bulletin, Vol. 88 (June 2006), pp. 224-242.
--This article discusses the spaces determined by the placement of the Colossus of Nero in the city of Rome. This statue, around 40 meters high (taller than the Coliseum itself), was originally constructed as a monumental, political statement by Nero, a grandiose, extravagant portrait of the emperor himself that stood prominently on the high ground on the upper Forum at the entrance to his palatial Golden House. After Nero’s fall, the statue, now in the guise of the sun god, Sol, was moved to the space in the nearby valley that marked the intersection of the entrance to the religious and civic monumental area of the Forum with the popular monumental area determined by the new Flavian Amphitheater. The statue eventually acquired religious, and later, Christian significance, giving its name to the Amphitheater, the Coliseum. Marlowe analyzes the topographical significance of this statue, how its exact placement in the city of Rome, seen through the Arch of Constantine, contributed to its characterization and its symbolism. The plaza determined by the Colossus of Nero could be considered to be a form of sacred space through its connection to ideals of Christianity, its constant interaction and interplay with emperors early on (Nero, Vespasian, Hadrian), with spectators over time, with visitors to the city, and its later association of the Christian God with Sol (CM).
Miles, Margaret M., “Cicero’s Prosecution of Gaius Verres: A Roman View of the Ethics of Acquisition of Art,” International Journal of Cultural Property 11 (2002), 28.
--An interesting article on incipient notions of what we would now, according to Miles, classify as issues surrounding cultural property. Focusing on Cicero's arguments against the despoilment of cities and especially religious sites in the interest of art collecting as developed in his prosecution of Gaius Verrus (the Verrines), she calls attention to a distinct anxiety among certain Romans about removing objects that had been consecrated to a god from their original context, or at the very least, about recontextualizing such pieces inappropriately. These correlations between "sacred objects" belonging in "sacred space" and "private objects" being suited for domestic spaces are useful for thinking about the relationship between object and place, and whether the former loses its primary associations if used outside of the place for which it was intended. (HW)
Muir, Edward., Ritual in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1997)
Muir addresses the impact and transformation of ritual practices in Europe before and after the Protestant Reformation. He argues that the period between 1400 – 1700 demonstrated a reformation of ritual theory, not only in the church but also in social practices that transformed the notions of time, the body and religion. He also closely examines how the meaning and efficacy of ritual changed from the Protestant Reformation as rituals became less about presence and more about representation. He also notes that while the Protestant Reformation outwardly promoted anti-ritual, they also developed specific ritual acts that promoted protest and thus, the Protestant Reformation did not abolish ritual but rather changed its meaning. Additionally, Muir argues that transformation did not only take place within the church but also extended into government practices and methods of rulership. This broad reference on early modern ritual (it is conceived as a textbook) is especially useful for its analysis of the spatial orientations of the body and its interactions within the spaces of ritual practice that were conceived as both sacred and profane. (EAF)
Parkin, David. “Ritual as Spatial Direction and Bodily Division” in "Understanding Rituals" ed. Daniel de Coppet. New York: Routledge, 1992.
--This is a very interesting article on the connections between ritual action and the body that served as a conversant for Muir's "Ritual in Early Modern Europe" (see above). Parkin views sacred space as socially constructed vis-à-vis the unspoken, performative aspects of ritual that cannot be recorded. Like Jonathan Z. Smith, Parkin views sacred space as relational, arguing that the parameters of sacred space are delineated through the bodily motions of ritual action. Parkin also takes a processual view of ritual and sacred space, and thereby echoes Victor Turner's analysis of ritual as a rite of passage. This article broadly conceived from an anthropological point of view, and thereby can be applied to a variety of disciplines. (EAF)
Povoledo, Elisabetta. "Past Catches Up With The Queen of Roads," New York Times (April 5, 2008).
--An interesting article in today's New York Times in which Povoledo explores debates about the preservation of the Appian Way in Rome. The language with which archaeologists arguing in favor of preservation articulate their justification for privileging the road's ancient strata over the modern is striking: current residents are denizens and neo-barbarians who don't realize they are living in "special conditions," the regional park of Appia Antica is a "natural habitat," and so forth, not to mention the archaeologists' visceral reactions to assorted modern inflections to monuments along the road. Offers a rich example of how notions of antiquity and distinctive spaces become conflated with Nature and the natural world. (HW)
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/05/arts/design/05appi.html
Robinson, Betsey A. "Fountains and the Formation of Roman Corinth," Urban Religion in Roman Corinth (ed. Daniel N. Schowalter and Steven J. Friesen; Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2005) 111-140.
--A terrific and succinct article on Roman attempts to forge continuity between the famous Greek city of Corinth and the Roman colony built upon it during the Republican period, a century after the city's destruction by Roman forces. Robinson's study focuses on Roman building programs involving two fountains within the city, both heavily "historied," which evoked its founding mythology. The selective restoration of certain pre-Roman structures in the civic center of the colony, which overlies the sacred precinct of the former city, has interesting implications for how sacred spaces are defined and integrated in contexts of urban reuse. (HW)
Roller, Lynn. 1999. In Search of God the Mother. Berkeley: University of California Press
--This is an exhaustive survey of the cult of Cybele and Attis from its foundations in Asia Minor to its "Romanization" and back again. Less analytical than it is descriptive, Roller still manages to imbue this work with an understanding of the complexity of this religious tradition and the ways in which it has been concieved of, used, and appropriated in a variety of contexts within the ancient Mediterranean. (KFW)
Rogers, G. M. 1991. The Sacred Identity of Ephesos. Routledge.
--This book explores context and implications of the civic dedication by C. Vibius Salutaris at Ephesos in 104 C.E. The first four chapters address the contextual setting of the dedication and associated procession. These beginning chapters, while interesting, are not particularly applicable to the sacred or space. However, in chapter 5 "The Sacred Identity of Ephesos" he puts foward a hypothesis about (here, civic) performance (though Rogers uses civic and ritual performance interchangeably). He posits that this civic performance re-enacts, and thus re-creates Ephesos' ("sacred") history by means of a path through the storied urban landscape. He argues that the meaning behind this ritual is to reproduce and reify social hierarchies. (KFW)
Smith, J. Z. 1978. "Map is not a Territory" in Map is not a Territory: Studies i nthe hisotry of Religions. Leiden: Brill, 289-309
--This article is a reflection on Eliade's notions of hierophany and critically assesses the ways in which he has treated the anthropological data that he has used to construct his theory of the axis mundi. Section 2 of this book (chapters 4-9) deal with the construction of sacred space within the history of religions and particularly the work of Eliade. But the essays test his models on aspects of the Jewish tradition. He works with an ideology which he terms a “locative view of the world” that comes out of the ancient Near Eastern tradition. It has a particular bent to the scribal priestly elite who have a “vested interest in restricting mobility and valuing ‘place’”. He argues this model is flawed because of its classed realities and should not serve as a universal conceptual structure especially for archaic and primitive societies.
Smith, J.Z. 2003. "On Comparison" in Ando, C. (ed.) Roman Religion. Edinburgh University Press: 23-39
--This chapter, originally written for Smith's book Drudgery Divine: On the Comparison of EArly Christianities and the Religions of Late Antiquity, addresses whether the use of comaprison is a useful method when comparing disparate religious traditions. Smith argues that the assignation of the quality of "uniqueness" (particularly as applied to early Christianity) does not provide a useful platform for comparison because it implies an inability to comprehend the phenomenon at all, and thus impossible to compare it to other phenomena. Therefore, he suggests that the enterprise of comparison should focus not on the unique versus common, but rather on questions of borrowing and diffusion and the cultural values associated with these practices. This is all with the caveat that the exercise in comparison is necessarily a scholarly endeavor and does not provide insight into how things are (or were), but rather how things might be conceived or 'redescribed'. (KFW)
Stambaugh, John. “The Function of Roman Temples,” ANRW II.16.1 (1978), 554-605
--Stambaugh, as he states in his opening paragraph, intends this article to detail the “importance of religion in the social and political life of the Roman world” (554). And as his title announces, Stambaugh is primarily concerned with the overall function of Roman temples in the Republic and Imperial periods, not with their origins. Stambaugh thoroughly investigates the incentives, support, finances and laws needed to constitute, construct and inaugurate a temple, especially the preliminary necessities that predate the designation of the area sacra. He further discusses the rituals and preservation of these established temple sites. (CM)
Antonio Tempesta's Map of Rome.
--Mentioned in Simon Ditchfield’s article on Rome, Antonio Tempesta’s map of Renaissance Rome depicts the papal route clearly laid out in the city of Rome. The route, beginning at St. Peter’s Basilica and ending at the Capitoline Hill, can be considered as having been mapped in part onto the ancient Roman triumphal route. This topographical correlation reveals the continuity of ritual over centuries: from the military victory triumphs of the Roman generals to the religious parades of the Popes (CM).
Toynbee, J.M.C. and John Ward-Perkins. "The Shrine of St. Peter and the Vatican Excavations." London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1956.
--The second half of this in-depth archaeological study of the Tomb of St. Peter in the Vatican Necropolis addresses many issues intricately connected to the idea of sacred space. Toynbee and Ward-Perkins discuss the history of the shrine of St. Peter and the history of the saint himself. The authors focus on the shrine’s relationship to the surrounding necropolis, to the church that Constantine built around it, to the medieval altars erected on top of the tomb, and to Maderno’s confessio and Bernini’s Baldacchino from the Baroque period. This discussion of the treatment of the shrine of St. Peter’s clearly reveals the respectful interaction with a sacred space through art history, architecture and papal religion (CM).
Trexler, Richard. Public Life in Renaissance Florence, Studies in Social Discontinuity (Academic Press, 1980. Reprinted: Cornell University Press, 1991.
---Although Trexler's book focuses on the ways in which ritual formed civic identity in Renaissance Florence, his ideas regarding ritual are quite useful for many areas of scholarship. Trexler argues that ritual helped to both create and maintain life in premodern Europe and as such, ritual has the transformative power to change the society of both actor and audience. Trexler believes that the city of Florence itself provided a framework for such ritual practices and thus provided an apparatus for citizens to honor their community through performance and spectacle. Trexler's work is an important contribution to ritual theory and is especially useful for the understanding of civic ritual and how the secular space of the "city" becomes sacralized through ritual action. (EAF)
Tuan, Yi-Fu. 1977. Space and Place: The Perspective of Experience Minessota U. Press.
--This work by one of the preeminent human geographers examines the ways in whihc space becomes differentiated as place through the processes of experience. It places great emphasis on the role of affect and memory in the actual production of place. It is one of the foundational texts for the emergence of a phenomenological take on the question of landscape, however, it differs in the way in which is attentive to the senses of the human body as central to that project and not merely issues of movement.
Wheeler, Brannon. Mecca and Eden: Ritual, Relics and Territory in Islam. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006.
---Wheeler address concepts of ritual, sacred space and relics from the field of Islamic Studies. Wheeler's impressive book (the footnotes are about as long as the text itself) considers the relationships among the loss of Eden, lslamic law and the attempt to recreate this paradise in the city of Mecca. As such, he views relics not as a sacred remnant of the Prophet Muhammad but instead as a reminder of the Prophet and the law he instated that was necessary because of the loss of Eden. Relics and ritual therefore linked the past history of Muhammad to the present need for political and religious legitimacy of Islamic rule (Shari'a). As such, relics “marked” Islamic territory through state-supported enshrinement of these objects. For Wheeler, ritual and the “body” are intricately connected through the enshrinement of holy body parts which thereby ignited sacred space. This book provides a good example of the concept of ritual and relics (ie. holy bodies) in a non-Western context and thereby challenges us to think of such constructions of ritual with a more nuanced perspective for changes in meaning among distinct cultural and religious environments. (EAF)
Woolf, Greg. 2003. "Polis-Religion and its alternatives in the Provinces," in in Ando, C. (ed.) Roman Religion. Edinburgh University Press: 39-57
--In this chapter, Woolf explores the polis-religion model and its potential in/applicability in the Roman provinces as a framework for exploring the intersection of religion and politics. As a precurser to his discussion, he acknowledges that many of the ancient texts and modern scholarship have taken the polis-religion as the dominant form of worship in antiquity, effectively sidelining other religious pracitces. He takes the model of civic cult presided over by the ruling elite that was the predominant form of worship in the archaic and classical periods in Greece, and explores the ways in which cult and worship change with Roman imperialism. Ultimately, he argues that as the autonomy and integrity of poleis were eroded by Roman imperialism there was a marked growth in alternative forms of religion which paid less respect to polis boundaries than to a particular sense of community. (KFW)
