A History of the Church through its Buildings

Allan Doig

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English

Oxford University Press
24 December 2020

Religious buildings; Religion & beliefs; Christianity; Christian Churches & denominations; Church history

The History of the Church through its Buildings takes the reader to meet people who lived through momentous religious changes in the very spaces where the story of the Church took shape. Buildings are about people, the people who conceived, designed, financed, and used them. Their stories become embedded in the very fabric itself, and as the fabric is changed through time in response to changing use, relationships, and beliefs, the architecture becomes the standing history of passing waves of humanity. This process takes on special significance in churches, where the arrangement of the space places members of the community in relationship with one another for the performance of the church's rites and ceremonies. Moreover, architectural forms and building materials can be used to establish relationships with other buildings in other places and other times. Coordinated systems of signs, symbols, and images proclaim beliefs and doctrine, and in a wider sense carry extended narratives of the people and their faith.

Looking at the history of the church through its buildings allows us to establish a tangible connection to the lives of the people involved in some of the key moments and movements that shaped that history, and perhaps even a degree of intimacy with them. Standing in the same place where the worshippers of the past preached and taught, or in a space they built as a memorial, touching the stone they placed, or marking their final resting-place, holding a keepsake they treasured or seeing a relic they venerated, probably comes as close to a shared experience with these people as it is possible to come. Perhaps for a fleeting moment at such times their faces may come more clearly into focusEL

By: Allan Doig
Imprint: Oxford University Press
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions: Height: 245mm, Width: 165mm, Spine: 25mm
Weight: 1g
ISBN: 9780199575367
ISBN 10: 0199575363
Pages: 320
Publication Date: 24 December 2020
Audience: Professional and scholarly , Undergraduate
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active

Allan Doig read Architecture at King's College, Cambridge, where he also completed a PhD. After a number of years as a university lecturer in the History of Art at the University of Kent, Canterbury, he was ordained, and during his curacy at St Helen's in Abingdon was responsible for the restoration of the fourteenth-century painted ceiling in the Lady Chapel there. From his curacy he took up the Chaplaincy of Lady Margaret Hall in the University of Oxford and was elected to a Fellowship in 1996. He has served on the Oxford Diocesan Advisory Committee for the Care of Churches, the Council for the Care of Churches, English Heritage's Places of Worship Advisory Committee, and the Fabric Advisory Committees of Salisbury and Ely Cathedrals, and he has also published many books and articles on the history of church architecture. He is a Fellow of both the Society of Antiquaries and the Royal Historical Society.

Reviews for A History of the Church through its Buildings

Doig's book underscores the patently important role that church buildings played and continue to play in Christian, non-Christian, and post-Christian societies. Readers will appreciate the accessible treatment of the monuments; their contextualization through the use of primary sources; and the author's apt and intelligent commentary. In the middle of a pandemic, with severe travel restrictions still in place, Doig's lively descriptions and unbridled enthusiasm for these buildings allowed us to travel, and he reminds us that what is built for worship and wonder is worth its own story. * Vasileios Mari, Marginalia Review of Books * The book serves as an excellent introduction to particular buildings, especially those that are not normally taught in the context of a university in the United States.... it is an episodic account of the wonderful, weird, and glorious aspects of ecclesiastical architecture and its patrons. * Vasileios Marinis, The Marginalia Review of Books * [An] ambitious study... [a] well-illustrated tour of the Christian world's greatest landmarks of the base, earthly instincts that are intertwined in such heavenly buildings. * Peter Stanford, The Sunday Telegraph * The buildings in this book have epic stories to tell, and Doig has a tremendous knack for telling them. * Alison Shell, Times Literary Supplement * Doig's volume engages with a broad geographic range of key buildings and provides an accessible history of Christianity, engagingly told through its monuments and architecture. * Claire Nesbitt, Journal of Antiquity * This is a fascinating approach linking history with architecture and therefore the spaces of ritual and ceremony implying certain types of relationship. * David Lorimer, Paradigim Explorer * Each chapter examines a church in an original way, a thousand miles from usual guidebook historical rat-runs. * Christopher Howse, Spectator * What a treat to be taken on a tour of sacred sites in Rome and Istanbul, Moscow and Jerusalem, Aachen, Paris, Cordoba - and Ewelme and Coventry - by the Revd Dr Allan Doig! An architect, priest, and scholar, he is an expert guide: one who has walked these streets many times before; one who has read widely and long reflected on how faith and architecture intersect... no reader could resist the combination of scholarship and enthusiasm which runs throughout the volume, and it provokes the hope that others might follow its lead. * William Whyte, Church Times * This is a fascinating approach linking history with architecture and therefore the spaces of ritual and ceremony implying certain types of relationship... 12 buildings are chosen and illustrated... all of which provide a multifaceted and a vivid picture - 'a standing history of passing waves of humanity.' * Paradigm Explorer * an excellent introduction to particular buildings it is an episodic account of the wonderful, weird, and glorious aspects of ecclesiastical architecture and its patrons In Doigs experienced hands, the chosen sites make for scintillating and colorful stories the greatest strength of the book is that the general public will find it a rewarding readingdare I say a page-turner? In this one book, any interested reader can learn about Constantine and Putin, about Aachen and Istanbul, about medieval English chantries and mosques turned to cathedrals in Spain. * Vasileios Marinis, Marginalia *