Hors D’oeuvre Books

by Steven Dunn

The sort of books one might leave out on a coffee table when guests come over tend to be of a particular type. Often, they are not meant to be read in any more depth than a brief glance at the caption of an image or a short skim of the overleaf next to it. The Cambridge Guide to the Architecture of Christianity (two volumes, Cambridge University Press) is not in this category.

But this doesn’t mean I wouldn’t leave it on my coffee table for friends and relations to leaf through while I cook dinner or set out plates. The Cambridge Guide may be academic in the rigorous quality of its research, but it is unexpectedly delightful in the witty quality of its writing. Drawing together essays from some of the wisest minds and covering Christian architecture from the birth of Christ to the death of Philip Johnson, this bubbly collection boasts essays as short as a few pages and as long as a chapter, making it perfect to wander through, containing essays that dig deep into topics often ignored or glossed over in other histories of churches.

Why did Lutheran churches look like Catholic ones? Why were there so many round Calvinist chapels, and why were so many of them French? How did Gothic meld into the Renaissance outside of Italy, and what happened to Baroque when it sailed across the Atlantic? The Cambridge Guide has answers to all these questions and a dozen more you might have never thought to ask. Indeed, this is one of the most enjoyable surprises about it.

And yet, there are serious difficulties and puzzles as well. One of the great virtues of the coffee table book is the satisfaction it gives to the reader’s wandering curiosity. A textbook, however, should dive deeply into the most influential aspects of a historical subject in an orderly manner, making sure to touch upon the most important works or events. The Cambridge Guide is lacking in this respect. While it does not wander quite as much as a coffee table book, it lacks the order and emphasis of a proper textbook. It happily ventures into niche Polish modernism and Calvinist barn-construction while only barely brushing through the Italian Renaissance. Chapters hopscotch across the globe and still end up right next to each other, and though their diversity is often more complementary than jarring, this breadth means it would work better as an object of curiosity than a textbook or historical guide. The topics covered might be interesting to a reader already well versed in the history of church architecture, but to a new student, too much is left out to be useful, particularly in the second volume. The absolutist Lutheranism of Sweden may be fun to read about, but Palladio’s inclusion of a temple portico on a church for the first time is probably more essential to the history of buildings.

Still, that diversity can be pleasant for an evening read, and is a flaw is mainly found in the second volume, which covers the Renaissance to modernity. The first volume is an excellent overview of the first 1400 years of Christian church construction. This includes periods from which few identifiable buildings survive, such as the Merovingians in France and the Saxons of Britain, and the misty past before Constantine, when house churches may not have been as common as we’ve been led to believe. The volume also gives worthy precedence to Gothic and Byzantine buildings, as it should, given their importance in the history of the Church.

The collection’s major flaw shows itself primarily in volume two, which suffers from a lack of text and depth in its treatment of the Italian Renaissance, and which proceeds almost directly to modernity, mentioning the Gothic Revival, for example, only as it pertains to the rise of modern architecture. Out of 981 pages, only three were dedicated to the return of Gothic churches. This means that not only is there almost no discussion of Pugin in England or Australia, but there is also no discussion of the Beitang in Beijing or Saint Patrick’s in New York. For a movement so dear to many Christian denominations (so dear, in fact, that in many parts of the world, people immediately think of lancets when mention is made of a church), the absence of any treatment of the Neo-Gothic severely hurts the creditability of this book. The early twentieth-century regionalization of Christian architecture across the globe (whether in Nigeria or Nagasaki) is also left uncovered. The 140 years spanning 1800 to 1940 may be brief when held up next to two millennia of history, but considering the massive growth of the Church during this period, it really ought to be included. Some of the modern chapters could be clipped out to make room.

But despite these problems and limitations, the two volumes still work well as books to leave on my coffee table. I wouldn’t ignore them if I found them at a bookstore, but I would advise ignoring the title. A Cambridge Guide implies something thorough, like a multi-course dinner with each plate related to the one that came before it. This collection can be perused like a buffet. Essays can be complicated and meaty or simple and light, enjoyable to peruse for however much time is available to the reader.