Description
Book SynopsisStanding on Holy Ground in the Middle Ages illuminates how the floor surface shaped the ways in which people in medieval western Europe and beyond experienced sacred spaces.
The ground beneath our feet plays a crucial, yet often overlooked, role in our relationship with the environments we inhabit and the spaces with which we interact. By focusing on this surface as a point of encounter, Lucy Donkin positions it within a series of vertically stacked layersthe earth itself, permanent and temporary floor coverings, and the bodies of the living above ground and the dead beneathproviding new perspectives on how sacred space was defined and decorated, including the veneration of holy footprints, consecration ceremonies, and the demarcation of certain places for particular activities.
Using a wide array of visual and textual sources, Standing on Holy Ground in the Middle Ages also details ways in which interaction with this surface shaped people''s
Trade Review
This is an important book that inaugurates a paradigm shift in the study of religious architecture and ritual. Lucy Donkin draws the reader's gaze downwards to the paving within church interiors, calling her readers to consider religious space from the bottom up. The surface of the ground, she argues, 'played a crucial and hitherto underestimated role in the definition of places and people during the Middle Ages.
* English Historical Review *
Table of ContentsIntroduction
1. Holy Footprints
2. Church Consecration
3. Trampling Underfoot
4. Standing on Ceremony
5. Places of Prostration
6. Between the Living and the Dead
Conclusion
