Sacral Architecture on the Horizon : The Sacred Landscape of Medieval Pilgrims
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| Year of publication | 2018 |
| Type | Chapter of a book |
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| Description | The experience of walking from one church, monastery, or cathedral to another sacral building during the four-month journey changed for sure the way we, as art historians, approached objects of our studies and asked questions about them. When slowly walking towards a bell-tower in the distance or hearing a sound echoing from it after several hours in both cultivated and uncultivated nature, surrounded only by fields, mountains, rivers, stones, or trees, we indeed experienced excitement and relief (especially during storms and heavy rain). We were after all approaching a settlement, a place where one could potentially find food, water, shelter, some rest, help in general [Fig.]. Such silhouettes on the horizons (the majority of which today do not belong to a sacral building as in the Middle Ages but are high-rise office buildings or factory chimneys) drew us closer and aroused expectations. The question we asked while reflecting on these personal long-distance encounters with prominent landmarks in the landscape was: how did a medieval pilgrim understand with every step the changing and growing silhouettes of sacral buildings on the horizon? Or even, and more specifically, how did this experience of an object shape the later and closer encounter with it – how did the expectations of medieval pilgrims shape it? |
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