Ruins of sacred buildings: ideological message and problems of its preservation

Piotr Krasny

piotr.krasny@uj.edu.pl
Institute of Art History, Jagiellonian University; (Poland)
https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8726-1200

Abstract

The ruin is a building, whose shape is deformed and decoration have suffered significant loses. So the viewer’s attention is attracted by the ideological message of ruins, which is always different from the set of meanings of the complete edifice, and often contradicts it. This is clearly seen in the case of sacred buildings. In the 16th and 17th centuries Roman Catholic writers claimed, that the ruins of pagan temples in Rome are monuments of the ancient Roman Empire’s power, but their current state clearly shows the defeat of paganism and triumph of Christianity. The prelates thought that it was necessary to take care of the ruins, but they should not be rebuilt. Protestant writers in the British Isles took a similar attitude to the local ruins of monastic temples, seeing in them a clear manifestation of the fall of the “papist religion” and the triumph of Protestantism. During the French Revolution, remains of the ruined churches were consciously preserved as monuments of the decline of Christianity and the triumph of the new cult of reason. So rejection of the religion granted protection to ruins of sacred buildings. However the religious indifference growing in many communities causes problems with determining the place of such ruins in public space. Reducing them to the role of bizarre "street furniture" (eg the church of Saint-Livier in Metz), causes their ideological neglection, often contributes to their material destruction. Preventing such situation seems to be an important challenge for conservators dealing with the problem of "permanent ruin".


Keywords:

permanent ruin, church architecture, meaning of ruins

Brachmann, Ch. (2000). Tradition and innovation: Archbishop Chrodegang (742-766) and the Thirteenth-Century Family of Churches at Metz. Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 63, 24-58.
  Google Scholar

Burke, E. (1969). Reflections on the Revolution in France: and on the Proceedings in Certain Societies in London Relative to That Event. London: Penguin Books.
  Google Scholar

Byrnes, J. F. (2005). Catholic and French Forever: Religious and National Identity in Modern France. New Haven: Yale University Press.
  Google Scholar

Cattaneo, E. (1984). L’intensità di una vita. Dalla nobilità alla porpora cardinalizia. In: Il grande Borromeo tra storia e fede. (11-25): Cinisello Balsamo: Amilcare Pizzi.
  Google Scholar

Dent, J. (2016). Sinister Histories: Gothic Novels and Representations of the Past, from Horace Walpole to Mary Wollstonecraft. Manchester: Manchester University Press.
  Google Scholar

Fawcett, R. (2011). The Architecture of Scottish Medieval Church 1100-1560. New Haven: Yale University Press.
  Google Scholar

Fiango, G. (1973). La conservazione e il restauro dei monumenti in Francia nella prima metà di XIX secolo. Restauro. Quaderni di Restauro di Monumenti e di Urbanistica dei Centri Antichi. 2(1), 3-76.
  Google Scholar

Gay, R. (1986). A Fools bold soon shott at Stonage. A Discourse concerning Stone-Age. In: Legg, R. (ed,). Stonehenge Antiquaries. (17-51): Sherborne: Dorset Publishing.
  Google Scholar

Gilpin, W. (1798). Observations on the Western Parts of England, Relative: Chiefly to Picturesque Beauty. London: T. Cadell Jun. & W. Davies.
  Google Scholar

Ginsberg, R. (2004). The Aesthetics of Ruins. Amsterdam: Rodopi B.V.
  Google Scholar

Greene, P. (1982). Medieval Monasteries. Leicester: Leicester University Press
  Google Scholar

Hell, J., & Schönle, A. (2010). Acknowledgments. In: Hell, J., & Schönle, A (ed.). Ruins of Modernity. (XIII-XV): Durham: Duke University Press.
  Google Scholar

Hertklotz, I (2012). Scavi, collezionisti ed eruditi nella Roma del Seicento. In: Hertklotz, I. La Roma degli antiquari. Cultura e erudizione tra Cinquecento a Settecento. (121-144): Roma: De Luca Editori.
  Google Scholar

Hui, A. (2017). The Poetic of Ruins in Renaissance Literature. New York: Fordham University Press.
  Google Scholar

Karmon, D. (2011). In: The Ruins of the Eternal City: Antiquity and Preservation in Renaissance Rome. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  Google Scholar

Kehoe, S.K. (2010). Scottish Church: Catholicism, Gender and Ethnicity in Nineteenth-Century Scotland. Manchester: Manchester University Press.
  Google Scholar

Kleinbub, Ch.K. (2010). Bramante’s Ruined temple and the dialectics of the Image. Renaissance Quarterly, 63(1), 421-458.
  Google Scholar

Martin, G. (1969). Roma Sancta (1581). Roma: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura.
  Google Scholar

McKean, Ch. (2009). The Architecture of three religion: Scottish religious architecture after the Council of Trent. In: Chatenet, M., & Mignot, C. (ed.) L'architecture religieuse européenne au temps des Réformes. Héritage de la Renaissance et nouvelles problématiques. (201-216): Paris: Picard.
  Google Scholar

Marquardt, J.T. (2007). From Martyr to Monument: The Abbey of Cluny as Cultural Patrimony. Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.
  Google Scholar

Montagu, J. (1989). The Influence of the Baroque on classical Antiquity. In: Beck, H. & Sabine Schulze, S. (ed.) Antikenrezeption im Hochbarock. (85-108): Berlin: Gebr. Mann Verlag.
  Google Scholar

Montanari, T. (2016). La libertà di Bernini. La sovranità dell’artista e le regole del potere. Torino: Giulio Einaudi Editore.
  Google Scholar

More, R.E. (2016). Jane Austen and the Reformation: Remembering the Sacred Landscape. London: Routledge.
  Google Scholar

Piva, P. (1998). L’altro Giulio Romano: Il Duomo di Mantova, la chiesa di Polirone e la dialettica di Medioevo. Quisnello: Ceschi.
  Google Scholar

Pressensé de, E. (1859). The Church and the French Revolution: A History of the Relations of Church and State from 1789 to 1802. Transl. Stoyan, J. London: Hodder & Stoughton.
  Google Scholar

Réau, L. (1959). Les monuments détruits de l'art français. Histoire du vandalisme, vol. 1. Paris: Hachette.
  Google Scholar

Rossi Pinelli, O. (1986). Chirurgia della memoria. Sculture antice e restauri storici. In: Settis, S. (ed.). Memoria del antico nell’arte italiana, vol. 3. (183-250): Torino: Giulio Einaudi Editore.
  Google Scholar

Sénéchal, Ph. (1988). Resaturations et remplois de sculptures antiques. Revue de l’Art, 79, 47-51.
  Google Scholar

Seznec, J. (1995). The Survival of the Pagan Gods: The Mythological Tradition and Its Place in Renaissance Humanism and Art. Transl. Sessions, B.F. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
  Google Scholar

Sommerville, C.J. (1992). The Secularisation of Early Modern England. From Religious Culture to religious Faith. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  Google Scholar

Souchal, F. (1993). Le vandalisme de la revolution. Paris: Nouvelles Editions Latines.
  Google Scholar

Souchal, F. (2016). Wandalizm rewolucji. Przeł. Migasiewicz P. Warszawa: Biblioteka Kwartalnika Kronos.
  Google Scholar

Sparti, D.L. (2018), The Rebirth of ancient sculpture in 17th Century Rome. In Bacchi, A. & Coliva A. (ed.). Bernini. (75-830: Milan: Officina Libraria.
  Google Scholar

Spraggon, J.(2003). Puritan Iconoclasm during the English Civil War. Woodbridge: The Boydel Press.
  Google Scholar

Tschudi, V.P. (2017). Baroque Antiquity: Archaeological Imagination of Early Modern Europe, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  Google Scholar

Vestiges de l’église Saint-Livier à Metz. Tout-Metz. Actualité Régionale et Agenda, February 25, 2015.
  Google Scholar

Walsham, A. (2012). Sacred topography and social memory: Religious change and the landscape in Early Modern Britain and Ireland. Journal of Religious History, 36(1), 31-51.
  Google Scholar

Watkin, C.D. (1982). The English Vision. The Picturesque in Architecture, Landscape and Garden Design. London: John Murray Publishers.
  Google Scholar

Download


Published
2020-12-22

Cited by

Krasny, P. (2020). Ruins of sacred buildings: ideological message and problems of its preservation. Protection of Cultural Heritage, (10), 45–59. https://doi.org/10.35784/odk.2439

Authors

Piotr Krasny 
piotr.krasny@uj.edu.pl
Institute of Art History, Jagiellonian University; Poland
https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8726-1200

Statistics

Abstract views: 325
PDF downloads: 272