The Architecture of the Christian Holy Land: Reception from Late Antiquity Through the Renaissance

Moore (art history, Texas State Univ.) takes on a complex and far-ranging subject in her study of the changing perceptions in Europe of the architecture of the Christian Holy Land. The focus is not on the buildings so much as the European perception of them, re-creations of the structures in Europe, and the effect these were to have on the architecture in the Holy Land. Moore focuses on structures associated with Christ and the Virgin Mary, which she says have "special status" standing in for their absent bodies. The author notes that perceptions changed over time as Europeans experienced or reacted to the Crusades, the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem, the Franciscan custody of sites in the Holy Land, the Reformation, and the Renaissance. Throughout these periods, pilgrimage books were indicators of how the buildings in the Holy Land were viewed and here pilgrims' accounts receive treatment equal to that afforded the buildings. This book is well illustrated, with many photographs by the author.