An Architect’s Sources
by John P. Haigh, appearing in Volume 40
Thomas Gordon Smith’s personal sketchbooks run into the thousands of pages.
Articles
The Pantheon: Unanswered Questions
by Lothar Haselberger, appearing in Volume 40
The Pantheon, as we know (or don’t know) it, has been the object of puzzlement for several centuries.
Saint Philip Neri and Santa Maria in Vallicella
by Joseph Connors, appearing in Volume 40
A piazza on the Corso Vittorio Emanuele II, the busy modern thoroughfare that swerves through the Campus Martius on its way to the Vatican, allows a generous view of the “twin” façades of the oratory and the church.
Innovation at the Chapel of the Holy Shroud
by John Beldon Scott, appearing in Volume 40
Early modern commentators and theologians understood the relic known today as the Shroud of Turin as a witness of Christ’s Passion and a material proof of his suffering and resurrection.
Founder of a Classical Bauhaus
by Duncan G. Stroik and John Burgee, appearing in Volume 40
Duncan Stroik sat down with John Burgee to discuss the life and legacy of a great colleague and friend, Thomas Gordon Smith, who passed away in June of 2021.
Editorial: Euge Serve Bone et Fidelis
by Duncan G. Stroik, appearing in Volume 40
He did something no one else has done. He founded a classical school of architecture in the modern age.
Editorial: In Ecclesiis Benedicam Te Domine
by Duncan G. Stroik, appearing in Volume 39
What dictators throughout history have used force to do, we have done willingly.
Leon Battista Alberti and the Conversion of Pagan Architecture
by Eugene Johnson, appearing in Volume 39
Leon Battista Alberti made the pagan architecture of Greece and Rome safe for Christian churches.
Temple, Tabernacle, and Sepulchre: The Legacy of Bramante’s Tempietto
by Jack Freiberg, appearing in Volume 39
The first fully articulated expression of the Renaissance mastery of classical architecture, Bramante’s Tempietto, was created to honor the place where pious tradition located Saint Peter’s crucifixion in Rome.
The Myth of Renaissance Secular Humanism
by James Hankins, appearing in Volume 39
"Christian humanism” seems an oxymoron.
What Do We Do When Churches Are Attacked?
by Duncan G. Stroik, appearing in Volume 39
The Church faces more violent secular iconoclasts.
Editorial: Fides Et Ratio
by Duncan G. Stroik, appearing in Volume 24
A priest once told me that the best place to teach students the faith is in a church.
Editorial: Ex Nihilo Nihil Fit
by Duncan G. Stroik, appearing in Volume 20
Venice has a problem.
Holy Transfiguration Skete: A Pilgrim’s View
by Holy Transfiguration Skete, appearing in Volume 11
The Roman basilica, exemplified by Constantine’s fourth-century Church of the Resurrection in Jerusalem and by the many other monumental churches he had erected throughout the Roman world, remained the standard of church architecture in the West for more than a thousand years.
Editorial: Subruit Haec Aevi Demoliturque Prioris Robora
by Duncan G. Stroik, appearing in Volume 38
The Romans called it damnatio memoriae. When we deface or destroy an image of a leader, we reject his rule as illegitimate and call for the ending of his memory.
Angelic Choirs in Naples: Seventeenth-Century Convent Churches
by Helen Hills, appearing in Volume 38
Gabriele Zarri formulated the term recinti sacri or “sacred enclosures” to describe how convents represented sacred spaces that assumed a decidedly female character.
Viollet-le-Duc, The Hôtel Dieu, and the Vincentians: The Transformation of the Parvis of Notre-Dame
by Simone Zurawski, appearing in Volume 38
Much thought—including many articles in the special Notre-Dame issue of Sacred Architecture—went into the complexities of rebuilding the collapsed Medieval roof of the Cathedral of Notre-Dame and replacing the nineteenth-century wooden spire (flèche) of Eugène-Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc.
An Architecture for the Poor
by Duncan G. Stroik, appearing in Volume 38
When some of us think of architecture for the poor, we think of the Los Angeles Cathedral.
The Soul of a Church
by Dom Benedict Nivakoff, O.S.B., appearing in Volume 38
In 2016, three earthquakes scattered over three months shattered the town of Amatrice in central Italy, killing 300 people, and continued its devastation through the towns of Umbria, bringing down houses, schools, shops, and churches.
The Newman Guide to Communal Worship
by David Mills, appearing in Volume 38
The Church is people, true. We can get by if we have to with Mass any old place. But the Church requires churches.
Editorial: Non Timebis a Sagitta Volante in Die
by Duncan G. Stroik, appearing in Volume 37
Prayers for deliverance are made. Heroic priests visit the sick and dying, and heroic medical personnel serve them. It is a time for the works of mercy. It is also a time for cornerstones.
The Domed Canopy in Byzantine Church Design
by Jelena Bogdanović, appearing in Volume 37
The famous sixth-century Constantinopolitan cathedral of Hagia Sophia epitomized the might of the Byzantine Empire.
Anomaly of Good Form: A Gothic Church in Shanghai, City of Modernity
by Anthony E. Clark, appearing in Volume 37
While Beijing is a city of traditional Chinese architecture, identified by its emphasis on horizontality and sloped roofs, Shanghai is a city of Western modernity, marked by bright neon lights that illuminate the heights of soaring skyscrapers and monumental Neoclassical banks.
Horn of Salvation and Symbol of Chastity
by Terrence Ehrman, C.S.C., appearing in Volume 37
The unicorn represents “our Lord’s Incarnation and sinless life”—a symbol of Jesus Christ and of purity. How did the unicorn come to be associated with Christ and purity?
Church as Visible Speech
by Paige Hochschild, appearing in Volume 37
According to the last few pontificates, the most pressing questions of culture and doctrine are properly about the human person.
The Café is No Substitute for the Chapel: A Lesson from the Munich Airport
by Kyle Dugdale, appearing in Volume 37
Munich Airport Terminal Two was voted the world’s best terminal, not so long ago, by a global survey of fourteen million travelers.
Notre-Dame and Modern Secular France
by Jean Duchesne, appearing in Volume 36
Early in 2019 the spire of the Paris cathedral had disappeared under scaffolding as it was undergoing restoration.
A Damaged House to Be Restored
by Steven W. Semes, appearing in Volume 36
After Notre-Dame burned, most non-specialists assumed that a monument of its importance would be restored to its former state.
An Art Worthy of its Name
by Peter Pennoyer, appearing in Volume 36
The catastrophic fire that damaged Notre-Dame in April was not the first event that afflicted the great cathedral.
The Cathedral and the Island
by Leon Krier, appearing in Volume 36
Reconstruction according to a divine masterplan is the key to life.
A Return to the Source: Gothic Material and Meaning
by Daniel P. DeGreve, appearing in Volume 36
Set against the evening sky, the fiery plunge of the copper rooster that had crowned the lead-encrusted flèche of Notre-Dame de Paris seemed to herald a dreadful nightfall for the cathedral church, which for centuries has endured weathering, cataclysm, violence, and caprice.
It Ought to Be Gothick
by Witold Rybczynski, appearing in Volume 36
In 1681, the great Christopher Wren was called upon to add a bell tower (today known as Tom Tower) to the unfinished gatehouse of the Great Quadrangle of Christ Church in Oxford.
The Throne of Paris
by C. J. Howard, appearing in Volume 36
Imagine a re-enacted processional route to escort Jesus’s crown of thorns from Sainte-Chappelle, commissioned by Saint Louis IX King of France, to its new home in Paris’s Catholic cathedral a few blocks away.
Stones Calling to Conversion
by Abbé Eric Iborra, appearing in Volume 36
Seen from the sky the contrast was striking: an immense plume of smoke rising to dizzying heights from the city’s glowing heart, while the metropolis was bathed in a soft evening light.
S.O.S: Save Our Spire
by Duncan G. Stroik, appearing in Volume 35
The French people have a lot of experience in rebuilding churches.
Spiritual Exercises: Muziano’s Circumcision Altarpiece
by Alphonso L. Pinto, appearing in Volume 35
Built right after the Council of Trent, the Church of the Gesù (1568) stands in the heart of Rome on what seems to be an island flanked by streams of busy streets.
Comfort or Beauty? Assessing Aesthetics and Mission in Protestant Church Design
by Rev. Dr. Matthew Niermann, appearing in Volume 35
Over the past several decades Evangelical Protestant churches have sought to build buildings that differ from traditional church architecture in order to attract unchurched individuals to the church.
He is Here
by David Mills, appearing in Volume 35
It may have been partly the bright light, I admit, after all those crepuscular chapels.
Reciprocity Between Window and Wall in Renaissance Florence
by Virginia Raguin, appearing in Volume 35
Renaissance art was essentially public art, even as it was commissioned by single individuals and religious and civic organizations.
Except the Lord Build the House: Restoring a Sense of Beauty
by Anthony Esolen, appearing in Volume 34
The men who built the cathedral of Our Lady of Chartres did not have diesel engines, or lightweight metals like soft aluminum or firm titanium, or steel girders. The men who built Europe’s greatest Gothic church did not have cranes that could tower a hundred feet in the air without toppling, while lifting pre-formed blocks of concrete. They did not have computer models. They did not have the calculus. Most of them assuredly could not read.
Beijing’s “New” Cathedral: Renewal of a Classical Monument
by Anthony E. Clark, appearing in Volume 34
When we build,” John Ruskin famously remarked in The Lamp of Memory, “let it not be for present delights nor for present use alone. Let it be such work as our descendants will thank us for, and let us think ... that men will say, as they look upon the labor and the wrought substance of them, ‘See! This our fathers did for us!’” The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Beijing is undertaking a substantial restoration and renovation of its most famous church, the Xishiku North Cathedral, in a way that would have contented Ruskin’s sensibilities.
Continuity in Purpose: Warsaw after World War II
by Marcus van der Meulen, appearing in Volume 34
Most of Warsaw’s historic places of worship are post-war renovations, and several are even reconstructions. The reconstruction of Warsaw, once described by the historian Robert Harbison as the “largest war memorial,” is the most comprehensive attempt to rebuild a past reality. The reconstruction of churches was an essential part of it.
Backing Beauty
by The Rt Hon John Hayes, appearing in Volume 34
Truth is an absolute. And beauty the means by which it is revealed to us in its most comprehensible form. In John Keats’ words: “Beauty is truth, truth beauty—that is all / Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.” Through our connection with beauty, we enjoy a taste of the sublime and both an escape from and a compensation for the inevitable pains and trials of daily life.
Globalist Architecture in Kenya
by Kalinda Gathinji, appearing in Volume 34
My experience of Kenyan sacred architecture left me hoping to encounter more of the rich, vibrant colors of the culture: the patterns and textures of its textiles, the delicacy of its bead work, and the character of its sculptures revealed, celebrated, and translated into the sacred architecture. What I found instead was that many of the churches are of an austere, minimalist aesthetic which hardly evokes the sacred nature of the space and the vibrancy of Kenyan culture.
God the Father of Lights: C. S. Lewis on Christianity and Paganism
by Michael Ward, appearing in Volume 33
Most people would struggle to identify the church in Rome dedicated to Saint Mary and the Martyrs. But refer to it as “the Pantheon,” the home of all the gods, and everyone would immediately know what you are talking about.
Early Lutheran Church Architecture
by James Wetzstein, appearing in Volume 33
The architectural implications of the Augsburg Confession were probably not top-of-mind for those who signed it in 1530.
An Education in Beauty: Saint Turibius Chapel Renovation at the Pontifical College Josephinum
by Giles Dimock, appearing in Volume 33
On a lovely October afternoon I rode with William Burleigh to the Pontifical College Josephinum, he for the meeting of the board of trustees, and I to see the newly renovated and rededicated chapel of Saint Turibius.
Bigness of Touch: Liverpool Anglican Cathedral
by Craig Hamilton, appearing in Volume 33
Sir Giles Gilbert Scott’s magnificent Liverpool Cathedral commenced construction in 1904, shortly after his initial design, prepared at the age of twenty-two, had won a now-famous competition, and was finally completed seventy-four years later in 1978.
Oppression and Indifference
by George Rutler, appearing in Volume 33
In the late 1990s, I watched the rebuilding of the Cathedral of Christ the Savior in Moscow, replicating the nineteenth-century cathedral that had been dynamited by Stalin in 1931.
What Good Can Come Out of Nazareth?
by Joel Pidel, appearing in Volume 32
Can anything good come out of Nazareth? While the historical and spiritual answer to this question is so well known as to make the asking tongue-in-cheek, the question has remained one of continual renewal and response for a certain property on the outskirts of the city of Raleigh, North Carolina.