Perceptions of the Body and Sacred Space in Late Antiquity and Byzantium seeks to reveal Christian understanding of the body and sacred space in the medieval Mediterranean. Case studies examine encounters with the holy through the perspective of the human body and sensory dimensions of sacred space, and discuss the dynamics of perception when experiencing what was constructed, represented, and understood as sacred. The comparative analysis investigates viewers’ recognitions of the sacred in specific locations or segments of space with an emphasis on the experiential and conceptual relationships between sacred spaces and human bodies. This volume thus reassesses the empowering aspects of space, time, and human agency in religious contexts. By focusing on investigations of human endeavors towards experiential and visual expressions that shape perceptions of holiness, this study ultimately aims to present a better understanding of the corporeality of sacred art and architecture. The research points to how early Christians and Byzantines teleologically viewed the divine source of the sacred in terms of its ability to bring together – but never fully dissolve – the distinctions between the human and divine realms. The revealed mechanisms of iconic perception and noetic contemplation have the potential to shape knowledge of the meanings of the sacred as well as to improve our understanding of the liminality of the profane and the sacred.
Introduction: Encounters with the Holy, Jelena Bogdanovi Part I THE
IMMATERIAL AND PLACELESS SACRED
1. Images of Invisible Beauty in the
Aesthetic Cosmology of Dionysius the Areopagite, Filip Ivanovi Part II THE
SACRED MADE PALPABLE
2. Monumental Icons and Their Bodies in Early Christian
Rome and Byzantium, Maria Lidova
3. Imperial Bodies and Sacred Space?
Imperial family images between monumental decoration and space definition in
Late Antiquity and Byzantium, Maria Cristina Carile
4. The Influence of Icons
on the Perception of Living Holy Persons, Katherine Marsengill Part III THE
SACRED DELIVERED
5. Delivering the Sacred: Representing Translatio on the
Trier Ivory, Ljubomir Milanovi
6. Bodies in Motion: Visualizing Trinitarian
Space in the Albenga Baptistery, Nathan S. Dennis
7. A Mobile Dialogue of an
Immobile Saint: St. Symeon the Younger, Divine Liturgy, and the Architectural
Setting, Aye Belgin-Henry
8. Framing Glorious Spaces in the Monastery of
Hosios Loukas, Jelena Bogdanovi Conclusions. Iconic Perception and Noetic
Contemplation of the Sacred, Jelena Bogdanovi with Katherine Marsengill
Bibliography
Jelena Bogdanovi is Associate Professor of Architecture at Iowa State University, USA. Trained as an architect and an historian of art and architecture, she specializes in the architectural history of Byzantine, Slavic, Western European, and Islamic cultures in the Balkans and the Mediterranean.
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