The sacred landscapes of medieval monasteries: an inter-disciplinary study of meaning embedded in space and production

中世纪修道院建筑的建筑神圣空间得到了很好的研究，但很少有人将这种解释带到这些建筑所在的更广阔的景观中。事实上，研究这些景观的历史学家和考古学家的注意力一直集中在地产经济或以土地赠款为代表的赞助模式上。然而，从中世纪的文学和教会教义中可以清楚地看出，被造的世界被认为是人类与上帝关系的反映。该项目旨在确定适当的数据，并开发方法，以揭示各个修道院的制造者，包括订单本身，他们的赞助人，艺术家和他们更广泛的社区，如何将这些机构设计成他们周围世界的结构，以及世界本身如何在物理上进行调整，以反映形而上学。该项目将试图了解修道院与现有地形的关系，并探索这些行动的背景和动机。这些分析将与庄园经济和政治赞助的历史，考古学和地理学一起进行。该项目选择了两个已经开始工作的英国地区进行比较，威尔士和林肯郡中部，并选择了其中的少数修道院进行详细的关注。部署的方法产生于两个现有的主要项目：一个在高地和抵抗威尔士文化在地层佛罗里达在Ceredigion，威尔士，其中西多会修道院的1184年被设计成一个现有的神圣景观可以追溯到新石器时代后期或早期青铜器时代;和其他在低地和英国封建文化在巴林在林肯郡，类似的长期轨迹已被确定。这两个项目都确定了修道院房屋和具有神圣意义的既有景观之间亲密且有意识设计的关系。人们注意到，所创造的空间符合当代秩序的实践、需求、宇宙论和教条，以及当地的社会结构和机构。以往的研究方法包括野外调查、建筑物记录、遥感、地球物理和小规模发掘，沿着文献分析。这种方法将被应用到选定的寺院比较，以建立如何普遍使用这些原则的设计，以及他们如何在不同的秩序，文化和政治的变化。虽然我们将探讨这些景观中的经济驱动因素，但我们将重点关注这些修道院所从事的文化生产和再生产模式。因此，一方面可以探索书面文字及其手稿，其意象及其意义与修道院的空间设计和政治背景之间的关系。我们还将比较雕塑和建筑，作为象征性表达的形式，并考虑各自的景观设置，作为沟通形而上学和情感关系的工具，以神圣的景观。虽然这项研究将关注这些修道院及其景观的前身和起源，但我们也将探索这些关注点在多大程度上持续存在，因为它们遇到了中世纪后期和现代早期的意识形态，社会，政治和经济变化的重大转变。最后，这两个试点项目都广泛参与了社区互动和旅游经济中的遗产开发，通过部署研究见解，促进了对遗址及其神圣景观的知识和实际访问。我们的目标是通过刺激访问我们更广泛的网站来扩大这一成功。

The architectural sacred space of medieval monastic buildings is well studied, but little work has been done taking such interpretations out into the wider landscapes within which these structures sit. Indeed, the attention of historians and archaeologists working on such landscapes has been focussed on estate economies or on patterns of patronage represented by grants of land. It is clear from medieval literature and church dogma, however, that the created world was regarded as a reflection of the human relationship with the divine. This project seeks to identify appropriate data and to develop methodologies which will reveal how the makers of individual monasteries, including the orders themselves, their patrons, artists and their wider communities, designed these institutions into the fabric of the world around them and how the world itself was adjusted physically to reflect the metaphysical. The project will seek both to understand the ways in which the monastery was laid out in relation to existing topographies and to explore the background and motivation for these actions. Such analyses will be set alongside the history, archaeology and geography of estate economy and political patronage. The project has selected two British regions for comparative purposes where work has already been initiated, Wales and central Lincolnshire, and has chosen a small number of monasteries within them for detailed attention. The methodologies deployed arise from two existing major projects: one in an upland and resistant Welsh culture at Strata Florida in Ceredigion, Wales, where the Cistercian monastery of 1184 was designed into an existing sacred landscape dating back to the later Neolithic or early Bronze Age; and the other in a lowland and English feudal culture at Barlings in Lincolnshire, where similar long-term trajectories have been identified. Both these projects have identified an intimate and consciously designed relationship between monastic houses and pre-existing landscapes of sacred significance. Alterations have been noted that created space conforming with the practices, needs, cosmologies and dogmas of the contemporary orders, as well as local with social structures and agencies. Previous research has involved field survey, buildings recording, remote sensing, geophysics and small-scale excavation, along with document analysis. This methodology will be applied to the selected monasteries comparatively, to establish how universally such principles of design were used and how they varied in different orders, cultures and polities. Although we will explore economic drivers in these landscapes, we will focus on cultural modes of production and reproduction in which these monasteries were engaged. Thereby the relationship between the written word and its manuscripts, its imagery and its meaning on the one hand and the spatial design and political contexts of the monasteries, on the other, can be explored. We will also compare sculpture and architecture, as forms of symbolic expression, and consider their respective landscape settings, as vehicles for communicating both metaphysical and emotional relationships to the sacred landscape. Although this research will pay attention to the antecedents and origins of these monasteries and their landscapes, we will also be exploring the extent to which these preoccupations were sustained as they encountered the major shifts of ideology, social, political and economic changes of the later Middle Ages and the early modern era. Finally, both the pilot projects have engaged extensively with community interaction and the development of heritage within the tourist economy, promoting both intellectual and physical access to the sites and their sacred landscapes by deploying research insights. We aim to expand on this success by stimulating access to our wider range of sites.