The Sacred in the City

Liliana Gómez, Walter Van Herck, Liliana Gómez, Walter Van Herck

• Publisher: Continuum
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9781441183941
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Sozialwissenschaften
• Subtopic: Religionssoziologie

This book reflects the way in which the city interacts with the sacred in all its many guises, with religion and the human search for meaning in life. As the process of urbanization of society is accelerating thus giving an increasing importance to cities and the 'metropolis', it is relevant to investigate the social or cultural cohesion that these urban agglomerations manifest. Religion is keenly observed as witnessing a growth, crucially impacting cultural and political dynamics, as well as determining the emergence of new sacred symbols and their inscription in urban spaces worldwide. The sacred has become an important category of a new interpretation of social and cultural transformation processes. From a unique broader perspective, the volume focuses on the relationship between the city and the sacred. Taking a multidisciplinary approach, combining the expertise of philosophers, historians, architects, social geographers, sociologists and anthropologists, it draws a nuanced picture of the different layers of religion, of the sacred and its diverse forms within the city, with examples from Europe, South America and the Caribbean, and Africa.

Part One

The Sacred and the City: Theoretical Approaches

Chapter 1

Sacred Horror Vacui. A Philosophical Reflection

Walter Van Herck

By ‘sacred horror vacui’ I mean the impossibility of complete profanation or perfect secularity. However much public space is rendered devoid of symbols, ritual and the sacred, there is an ineradicable dynamics to fill the vacuum. I explore these dynamics by reflecting first on the category of ‘non-place’. Second, I take a closer look at medieval processions in order to see what we have lost in dealing with the sacred in the public domain. Third, the suggestion that our contemporary museums are ritual sites is investigated. Could this be a genuine retrieval of the sacred? And last: the sacred underwent many transformations in our time, but the urge to externalize our highest values and seek recognition for these symbols of what we deem holy, remains unchanged.

Two Exemplary Places

A city is a locus of transformation. People, businesses, professions change in the city. But the city itself changes too. In comparing two paradigmatic places the ways in which the urban public space has changed and changes, becomes clear. James Frazer’s portrayal of the city of Rome of his day is juxtaposed with a clip from 2001: A Space Odyssey (Stanley Kubrick, 1968).

James Frazer, the famous armchair anthropologist, is the writer of the magisterial study The Golden Bough. As is well known, the book starts with a sketch of the priesthood of Nemi. Near the lake of Nemi – south of Rome – there was in ancient days a temple for the Goddess Diana. The priest taking care of the sanctuary would, as a rule, be replaced by his murderer, thus leading a stressful, vigilant and short life. Frazer is baffled by this phenomenon and dedicates the rest of his extensive work to resolving the riddle of the priesthood of Nemi by tracing comparable customs in other cultures and in history.¹ After all his reflections on heathen forms of religion, Frazer ends his book on a more Christian note. So, I’m here not interested in pagan notions of the holy, but in what Frazer – a bit off guard – says about Rome in the last sentences of his book:

Once more we take the road to Nemi. It is evening, and as we climb the long slope of the Appian Way up to the Alban Hills, we look back and see the sky aflame with sunset, its golden glory resting like the aureole of a dying saint over Rome and touching with a crest of fire the dome of St. Peter’s. The sight once seen can never be forgotten [. . .] But Nemi’s woods are still green, and as the sunset fades above them in the west, there comes to us, borne on the swell of the wind, the sound of the church bells of Rome ringing the Angelus. Ave Maria! Sweet and solemn they chime out from the distant city and die lingeringly away across the wide Campagnan marshes. “Le roi est mort, vive le roi!” (Frazer, 1976, p. 934).

Frazer must have seen in Christianity part of the solution to the mystery he is trying to solve. Christ is a king who dies and saves the world. Frazer’s walk to the Alban Hills stays within hearing distance of the church bells of Rome. Rome is for Frazer a landmark of Christian meaning and as such it overarches his inquisitive searches in antiquity. The place where he stands on the Via Appia, looking back at Rome, is a space interwoven with meaning. Sacred reference points like Saint Peter’s seat give orientation. The sound of the bells² tolling penetrates every space within its vibrant circle.

The movie 2001: A Space Odyssey offers us an entirely different experience of ‘space’. In one scene, just after the opening scene in which primates discover the use of utensils, a scientist Dr Heywood Floyd (William Sylvester) is on his way to the moon. A shuttle brings him to a space station to the tunes of a Straussian waltz. In the space shuttle almost complete silence reigns. Once he arrives in the space station Floyd traverses different waiting rooms and is attended by charming, but impersonal hosts. He follows computer instructions for identification and uses a phone booth to speak to his little daughter. After being brought from the space station to the moon base, Dr Floyd steps into a conference room where a company of officials awaits him. When first describing this scene the word ‘impersonal’ comes to mind, given the uniform type dresses of all characters and the quasi-clinical environment. No signs of collective values or symbols are present. The only meaning here is functional.

Place and Non-place in Supermodernity

In Non-places: An introduction to supermodernity the ethnologist Marc Augé (Augé, 2008) undertakes to study the city in its most recent appearances. In order to do this he distinguishes between place and non-place. His thesis is that the last category is starting to dominate urban life.

Place can also be described with the more accurate term ‘anthropological place’. It is defined in several ways. Among these definitions is the characterization that it is a space in which inscriptions can be found of social bonds and collective history (Augé, 2008, p. viii). A place is therefore a symbolic universe where everything is a sign or part of a code:

. . . universes of meaning, of which the individuals and groups inside them are just an expression, defining themselves in terms of the same criteria, the same values and the same interpretation procedures. (Augé, 2008, p. 25)

The identity of place is a crucial factor in the establishment and unity of a group. Of course, this cultural community localized in time and space is partly the product of an illusion. Cultures create myths concerning their origin, sometimes blind to the diversity and relativity of their history. This indigenous fantasy often corresponds to the illusions of the ethnologist concerning the autarkic character of culture, but, however much an illusion, the experience of the identity of place is a reality. Through the organization of space and the founding of places identity is built (Augé, 2008, pp. 37–41).

‘Anthropological places’ are places of identity, of relations and of history. The place of birth for example is often mentioned as a constitutive element of one’s identity. ‘I’m originally from X (specifying a city, region, state, country)’ or ‘I was born in X’ are standard ways of giving autobiographical information that is seen as throwing light on who one is. The spatial position one is given, situates one in a configuration of relations and loyalties. To live in an anthropological place means to live in a place which was built by one’s ancestors.

The simplest example that can be given of an ‘anthropological place’ is perhaps a village or town. Its roads and paths come together at intersections where marketplaces and crossroads receive people for commercial, political and religious interactions. Inhabitants of these town centres erect monumental buildings like churches and town halls. With these monuments they try to give permanence to their culture and conceive themselves as part of something bigger: ‘. . . monuments . . . give every individual the justified feeling that for the most part, they pre-existed him and will survive him’ (Augé, 2008, p. 49). In such a context people are proud of their citizenship of a particular town. In some countries, people use joke names to indicate citizens of specific cities. Due to the Spanish rule of Antwerp, residents of that town are called ‘sinjoren’ (derived from ‘señor’) and other city dwellers in Belgium have received names like ‘chicken eaters’ (Brussels), ‘moon extinguishers’ (Malines), ‘onion eaters’ (Aalst). These names also testify to reciprocal prejudices. But due to an increase in mobility and migration, less and less people identify with their residential city, forsaking to call it ‘my town’.

Augé’s notion of non-place (non-lieu) refers to the postmodern space which stops radiating identity, thus being the exact opposite of anthropological places. Examples of such non-places are: hospitals, holiday clubs, trains and train stations, subways, airports, waiting rooms (Sayeau, 2010), shopping malls, supermarkets, educational institutions, office buildings, conference rooms, highways and their rest stops, transit areas, etc. Of course, Augé is conscious of the fact that neither place nor non-place exist in pure form. But still he has reasons to conclude: ‘non-places are the real measure of our time; . . .’ (Augé, 2008, p. 64).³

Non-places are typically instrumental spaces. One enters them in order to attain certain ends like transport, transit, commerce or leisure. While anthropological places are organically social, non-places create solitary contractuality.⁴ Passport, credit card, boarding pass, driver’s license and the like open the gates of the non-place. Word and text accompany one’s passage in the form of instructions for use: prescriptive signs (‘stand on the right, walk on the left’), prohibitive boards (‘no smoking’) and informative panels. Once inside one is one of many; a passenger, a customer, a driver, a visitor, a tourist. Unlike anthropological places where people are present in their full individual identity (being greeted in the street; craftsmen in their workshops; recognizable uniforms, toga’s, soutane’s) one is here freed from one’s defining qualities and can enjoy ‘the passive joys of identity loss’ (Augé, 2008, p. 83). Even a traveller feeling homesick in a strange country can experience relief upon entering non-places like gas stations or airports.

In opposition to modernity that integrates old and new, pre-modern and modern, ‘the chimneys and the spires’, postmodernity fails to do this. The churches and monuments are classified to the status of ‘places of memory and assigned to a circumscribed and specific position’ (Augé, 2008, p. 63). These monuments are approached with a specific attitude of people in search of a past and an identity. This is what we once were. Buildings and monuments have become nothing more than ‘heritage’ – sites of symbolic interest that lack vital involvement. ‘City marketing’ is the commercial exploitation of urban historic sites.

It seems clear that if Augé is right in thinking that the postmodern cityscape is dominated by non-places, two conclusions can be drawn. The first is that the predominance of non-places is the material correlate of a certain type of liberalism that highly values the neutrality of the state. The state should not force any conception of the good on its members. Non-place is above all a neutral space: no symbolizations, no local references, no community (that always excludes some people). The second conclusion is only the next step: the sacred is absent from non-places. This absence is an essential absence. When anything sacred would enter a non-place, it would immediately stop being a non-place.

Losing the Sacred

What exactly did we lose in losing ‘anthropological place’? Lilley (2004) offers an interesting perspective on the ways in which religious identity is present in medieval towns. What is original about his iconographic and morphological approach is that he wants ‘to look at medieval urban landscapes more from the point of view of those who were there at the time, to see them through medieval Christian eyes’ (Lilley, 2004, p. 308).

Many towns in the Christian world have legendary descriptions of their origins that connect them with the realm of the sacred. Textual sources often have references to intervening angels and saints. Descriptions of the position of walls, streets, churches and gates also mirror descriptions of Holy Jerusalem and incorporate symbols like the cross or the number of evangelists and apostles. The city-cosmos thus becomes a representation of the wider cosmos, thereby connecting heaven and earth.

This urban Christian symbolism enters the lives of the populace through the ‘participation in processions that punctuate the Christian calendar in honour of Christ and his saints’ (Lilley, 2004, p. 304). These processions are in many cases imitations of the liturgies of Jerusalem where Christians follow the (literal) path of Jesus. Jesus’ birth is celebrated in Bethlehem, the resurrection of Lazarus in Bethany, the suffering on Golgotha, the ascension on the Mount of Olives. Next to the carrying around of relics in honour of saints on their feasts, there are Eucharistic processions in which the Body of Christ (Corpus Christi) is carried through towns. The routes of these processions commonly connect the periphery to the centre where a cathedral (or something akin) functions as an axis mundi. The mystery plays or tableaux vivants which are performed on these occasions enact the whole of history from creation to judgement day. In...

Table of contents

• Cover-Page
• Half-Title
• Continuum Studies
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Notes on Contributors
• Framing the Sacred in the City: An Introduction
• Part One: The Sacred and the City: Theoretical Approaches
• Part Two: Religion, Built Environments and Urban Societies
• Part Three: Sacred Symbols, Sacred Spaces
• Part Four: Politics of the Sacred in Contemporary Urban Spaces
• Index