Junípero Serra’s Tastes and the Art and Architecture of the California Missions

As art historians Clara Bargellini and Pamela Huckins show in Chapter 9, the missions, at least in Serra’s mind, were to be held together not just by violence but by a common devotion to Catholicism that was reinforced by architecture and art. Bargellini and Huckins show that Serra had a clear sense of how he wanted to adorn the missions in the Sierra Gorda and those of Alta California, and he saw architecture and liturgical art as an important tool in the conversion of Indians. Images of the Virgin, Christ’s Passion, and Franciscan saints all took center stage in the churches of the California missions, and Serra favored an older Baroque style over the emerging Neoclassicism.

Reflection of the Problems of Ukrainian Church Singing in the Source Materials of Galicia at the End of the XIX – early XX Century

As a result of the awareness of the important role of spiritual and cultural phenomena in the development of Ukrainian culture, modern society has a particular interest in the historical context of the formation of sacred art. Therefore, the process of research of church singing based on reliable information, fixed in Galician periodicals since the appearance of the first publications on this topic and before the Second World War, became the basis of the writing of the article. The choice of methodological principles is conditioned by the specifics of the research carried out, in particular, the accumulation of materials with further understanding and selection. Historical and cultural studies, art studies, theological and teaching materials, which are found at the time periodical, preserved in the department of ukrainian, in the scientific department of periodicals by Maryana and Ivanni Kotsiv, National Library of Ukraine the name of V. Stefanyk, and in the State Archives of the Ternopil region. The use of comparative and cultural methods helped to highlight the historically determined features of ritual and church-musical life of Galicia at the end of the 19th and the first half of the twentieth century under the conditions of expansion of the pro-government structures. Due to the functional approach, the problems of coexistence of denominations, social conditions of the Greek Catholic Church, the status of daco-regent education and publishing, and the role of personalities in the practice of church singing are outlined. On this basis, a holistic evaluation of spiritual and choral performance and the social context of church singing as a form of realization of the liturgical art of the Eastern rite in Galicia at the end of the nineteenth and first half of the twentieth century was achieved. The source materials revealed the activation of public opinion in the press at that time, showed the significant role of the Ukrainian Church in shaping national self-awareness and dominance of the spiritual factor in the outlook and everyday life of the Galician.

On the chanting space and hymns that were sung in it. Searching for chanting-architectural connections in the middle ages

The search for the unexplained interactions of domestic medieval liturgical music and sacred architecture of the Moravian style has not been the subject of interdisciplinary study so far. A reflection on the potential relationg between church chanting and architecture is absent from the largest part of the existing literature on the development of medieval sacral art. The scarcity of written historical sources, and especially musical ones, made it particularly difficult to define the connection between the chanting circumstances and the changes in the architectural form of the late Byzantine period, which is almost a standardized Moravian architectural form. The earliest preserved bilingual - Greek-Slavic neumatic manuscripts, mentioning both the names of the first famous Serbian medieval composers, and the more or less well known late Byzantine musicians who had actively participated in the earliest religious services of the Serbian Church, confirm that the culmination of the chanting art in Serbia occured precisely at the turn of the 15th century and then until the fall of Serbia under Turkish rule. Comparing the available data, with a general insight into the migration flows that led to the Byzantinization of Serbian culture in that period, showed that after the reconciliation of the Serbian Patriarchate and the Patriarchate of Constantinople, in 1374, the world-class building tradition was adopted, which until then was sporadically seen on the Serbian soil. The architectural form of the Moravian style would become recognizable by the singing apses in the axis of the transept, in the middle of the already adopted form of the inscribed cross from the early 14th century. Within the framework of the overall church, political and cultural transformation that was visible in Serbian society, the chanting practice of the Serbian Church, or more precisely the greater affirmation of the liturgical art and the increase in the number of the chanters, certainly had a share both in acceptance and in the consistent implementation of the architectural solutions of the Moravian style. Future research should focus on the holistic analysis of the Moravian cultural heritage, in order to map the movement of the known and unknown Serbian Greek melods and determine the scope of their activity. The existing knowledge of the architectural features of the Moravian sacred buildings will thus receive a significant addition, from the liturgical and religious service in which each form of church art is individually represented as part of a much more complex artistic ensemble with which the Kingdom of Heaven on the Earth is iconized.

Becoming Christ Cathedral : the emergence, rise, and transformation of the crystal cathedral

[ACCESS RESTRICTED TO THE UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI AT REQUEST OF AUTHOR.] The Crystal Cathedral was part of the Reformed Church of America, located in Southern California, started by Reverend Robert H. Schuller. This Protestant place of worship thrived for many years, however, after struggling financially, was sold to the Catholic Diocese of Orange and renamed Christ Cathedral. The key informants, those social actors in charge of defining and designing the Crystal Cathedral and Christ Cathedral, afforded a unique gaze of this fluid built form. They exposed details about place formation, how leaders made sense of design and worship in a transformational space, and how the sacred environment was shaped by context, events, and participant engagement. The findings of the case study, which used a ground theory level of analysis, revealed that the sacredness of the Christ Cathedral was a result of spatial, spiritual, and socio-cultural forces. The lens of this study concentrated on the social perspective of the spatial and spiritual realm, and revealed the story of a sociallyconstructed sacred space; a space hinged on the culture it served and made sacred by the human beings it acted for. As the social actors representing the Catholic Diocese designed their new sacred space, they embraced the impact of the former Protestant ministry and distinct architecture of the Crystal Cathedral, yet disclosed ways the space needed to change. The actors worked with thresholds to more clearly separate the sacred from the profane, incorporated places for rituals to occur, added deliberate symbolism via liturgical art, materials and lighting to directly corresponded to the Catholic faith. This new design enhanced the aesthetics of the space to frame the place as more "authentically Catholic" in order to afford ways participants could bridge across the physical space to the spiritual realm.