Edited by Monsignor Timothy Verdon
Rich in theological and historical information, and with almost 2800 illustrations, the new book series Reading Christian Art and Architecture offers a unique panorama of human creativity in response to the Divine.In religions that make use of art, images are messages. They illustrate texts and traditions, explain doctrines, accompany rites, visualize feelings. The same is true of buildings in which faith-communities gather, for space too is communicative. This series of eight volumes will read Christian art and architecture in these terms: in relation, that is, to Scripture and exegesis, to theology, to liturgy, and to devotional piety. The books will recount the development of Christian visual culture from the catacombs to the present, situating each period in the ecclesiastical context of its time.
The volumes are:
I Method, Meaning, Mystery
II From the Catacombs to Gregory the Great
III Monastic Art, the Two Empires, Romanesque Europe
IV The Gothic Age
V The Early Italian Renaissance
VI Sixteenth-Century Italy and the Lutheran Reform
VII Catholic and Protestant Baroque
VIII Revivalism, the Struggle to Modernize, and Contemporary Christian Art
Volume I
Method, Meaning, Mystery
Scheduled for Autumn 2025
