Cathedrals - in a Nutshell (In a Nutshell (Naxos Audio)) (Non-fiction)

Jonathan Gregson

ISBN 10: 1843793873 ISBN 13: 9781843793878

Publisher: Naxos AudioBooks, 2010

Synopsis

This 'In a Nutshell' guide examines the history, functions and traditions associated with the most dominant architectural structure on city skylines - cathedrals.

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Review:

This nifty little history traces the development of cathedrals from the early days of Christianity, when bishops and their flocks worshipped underground to escape Roman persecution, to the present, when the overthrowing of another empire, the USSR, has led to a surge of ecclesiastical building all over its former territories - Saint Sava in Belgrade, still unfinished, is the newest cathedral in the world. Over 2,000 years, the shape of cathedrals has changed fundamentally. The earliest, constructed when Constantine embraced Christianity in the fourth century, borrowed the columns of Roman temples and the domes of their great, public basilicas. The domed Church of Hagia Sophia in Constantinople, built on the model of the square Greek cross, its interior dark and mosaicked, became the dominant influence on eastern ecclesiastical architecture. Western cathedrals favoured the processional nave: the long, massive, arched beauty of Romanesque cathedrals marks the passing of the Viking threat to peace. A few centuries on and Gothic came into flower, its lofty ceilings and vast windows made possible by the invention of new technologies such as flying buttresses. Despite the later development of the Baroque, many of the cathedrals constructed throughout the world, in the colonial and and after, were Gothic in inspiration. Most have been stylistically traditional in some way; the Catholic cathedral in Liverpool built in 1967 is one boldly modernist exception, its altar, smack in the middle, reflecting post-Vatican II liturgical practices. Indeed, Jonathan Gregson is interesting throughout about the way that cathedrals have always reflected and influenced the worship of the day. Read with vigour, this is a brief but satisfying account. --Julian Margaret Gibbs, The Tablet

About this edition

• Publisher: Naxos AudioBooks
• Publication date: 2010
• ISBN 10: 1843793873
• ISBN 13: 9781843793878
• Binding: Audio CD
• Number of pages: 1