Architectural Unity and Rhetoric: The Patronage of Carlo Borromeo
As in the period that followed the Council of Trent (1545 - 1563), the Catholic Church has redefined herself following the Second Vatican Council. In both the sixteenth and twentieth centuries changes in church architecture accompanied reforms to the liturgy, and today we are still trying to come to terms with attempts to redefine our sacred space. One way to evaluate contemporary churches is to understand the model that so many of them react against, which had been developed after Trent. However historians still debate the significance of that historical architecture; indeed, they disagree about its very qualities.