‘Holy, Holier, Holiest’
The Sacred Topography of the Early Medieval Irish Church
By (author) David Jenkins
This book explores the morphology of early medieval Irish religious settlement. It seeks to shift the focus of academic interest away from simply the materiality of settlement towards a greater concern for its possible theological significance. The critical literature is reviewed and the archaeological and literary evidence revisited in search of evidence for a consistent early medieval Irish schema for the layout of religious settlement. This study suggests that the enclosure and zoning of religious space was primarily inspired by depictions of the Jerusalem Temple through the medium of a universally received scriptural ‘canon of planning’. The distinctive early Irish religious landscape is a result of the convergence of this Christian exemplar of ordered holy space with vernacular building forms.These building forms were shaped by the legacy of Ireland’s recent pagan past whose architectural leitmotif was the circular or sub-circular form, in contrast to the buildings described in Christian texts. Some of the traditional assumptions about the possible heterodox nature of the ecclesiology of the early medieval Irish church are also challenged. Irish religious topography is set within the context of a universal Christian understanding of holy space which impacts upon the topography of religious settlement not just in Ireland but further afield in Anglo-Saxon England, Gaul and the Middle East. In this the book, like many other recent studies, challenges the presumption that there was a ‘Celtic church’ distinctive in its practices from the wider church, while documenting the local contribution to Christian architecture.
Rev. Canon Dr. David Harold Jenkins is an Anglican clergyman. Presently he is a residentiary canon at Carlisle Cathedral and Director of Education for the Diocese of Carlisle.
- By (author) David Jenkins
Other Titles in this Series
Friendship as Ecclesial Binding
A Reading of St. Augustine's Theology of Friendship from his In Iohannis Euangelium Tractatus
Volume 48
Analogical Identities
The Creation of the Christian Self: Beyond Spirituality and Mysticism in the Patristic Era
Volume 28
‘The Letter Killeth’
Redeeming Time in Augustine's Understanding of the Authority of Scripture
Volume 51
The Christian Topography of Early Islamic Jerusalem
The Evidence of Willibald of Eichstatt (700-787 CE)
Volume 2
Through the Bone and Marrow
Re-examining Theological Encounters with Dance in Medieval Europe
Volume 45
Removing Masculine Layers to Reveal a Holy Womanhood
The Female Transvestite Monks of Late Antique Eastern Christianity
Volume 13
Saints and Sinners in Early Christian Ireland
Moral Theology in the Lives of Saints Brigit and Columba
Volume 3
The Spirit, the World and the Trinity
Origen's and Augustine's Understanding of the Gospel of John
Volume 40
‘The loss of a minute is just so much loss of life’
Edward Robinson and Eli Smith in the Holy Land
Volume 39
Computus and its Cultural Context in the Latin West, AD 300-1200
Proceedings of the 1st International Conference on the Science of Computus in Ireland and Europe, Galway, 14-16 July, 2006
Volume 5
Healing not Punishment. Penitentials in the Insular Church
Historical and Pastoral Networking of the Penitentials between the Sixth and the Eighth Centuries
Volume 25
Agents in Liturgy, Charity and Communication
The Tasks of Female Deacons in the Apostolic Constitutions
Volume 37
Similar Books
A Companion to Christianity and Sport in Europe and North America (19th-21st centuries)
Volume 1: Western and Eastern Europe
A Connecting Polemic in the Medieval Mediterranean
The Correspondence of Leo III and Ê¿Umar II
Volume 6
Ars Prophetica
Theology in the Poetry of Twentieth-Century Hebrew Poets Avraham Halfi, Shin Shalom, Amir Gilboa, and T. Carmi
As Messianism Turns to Heresy
The Regenstein Chair Lectures On Lurianic Kabbalah and Shabbatai Tzevi at Hebrew Union College - Cincinnati
Creating the Woman in Antiquity
Proceedings of the 16th Melammu Workshop, Innsbruck, 2–3 June 2022
Volume 13
Cultic Kisses
Fruitful Encounters Between Deities and Humans. Festschrift for Angelika Berlejung on the Occasion of Her 65th Birthday
De/colonizing Theologies
Glocal Histories, Contemporary Challenges, Theoretical Reflections
Volume 4
Drunk the Potion, No Whit Charmed
The Doctrine of Pure and Perfect Souls from Iamblichus to Damascius
Extracanonical Traditions and the Holy Land
Texts, Rituals, and Material Culture in Late Antique Palestine
Fear, Fear of God, God-Fearers
Philological and Historical Perspectives on the World of Ancient Judaism and Christianity
Gender and Iconography in Antiquity
Femininities, Masculinities, Ambiguities, and Beyond in the Ancient Levant, Near East, and Mediterranean