Sacred Space

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

Ritual/Architectural Priorities (Lindsay Jones)

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

Egyptian Pyramids

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 30:3-5).

• Two great national disasters– 536 BCE – Babylonian Conquest – Ezekiel (visionary temple)– Return; second temple (Herod exapnds, lavishes attention)– Rome, 70CE - Diaspora

Rivers of BabylonPsalm 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 joy:“Sing us one of the songs of Zion!”

How can we sing Yahweh’s 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 you;if I do not prefer Jerusalem above my highest joy.

Remember, Yahweh, the children of Edom,on the day of Jerusalem;who 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.

Arad Temple Complex

Eliade• 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”

Sacred and ProfaneThe 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 25:22). 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 28:33–35, 42–43).]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).

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.

Politics/Contestation• Critiques of de-politicized, essentialized work of Eliade• David Chidester; Edward Linenthal• emphasizing a situational analysis. (Emile Durkeheim—sacred

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’

Jerusalem

II. Commemoration- divinity- sacred history- politics- the dead

Civil ReligionHoratio Greenhough, 1841 - mixed reviews; in Smithsonian since 1908.

Monumentality… always embodies and imposes a clearly intelligible message. It say what it wishes to say—yet it hides a good deal more.

- Henri Lefebvre

[h]istorical 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

Monuments and Ideology

Wittenberg Town Map

Schlosskirche (Castle Church - politics)