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

人们对中世纪修道院建筑的神圣空间进行了很好的研究，但很少有人将这种解释带到这些建筑所处的更广泛的景观中。事实上，致力于这类景观的历史学家和考古学家的注意力一直集中在庄园经济或以批地为代表的赞助模式上。然而，从中世纪文学和教会教义中可以清楚地看出，被创造的世界被视为人类与神的关系的反映。这个项目寻求确定适当的数据并制定方法，揭示个别寺院的制作者，包括修道会本身、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，以及世界本身是如何进行身体调整以反映形而上学的。该项目将寻求了解修道院的布局方式与现有地形的关系，并探索这些行动的背景和动机。这些分析将与房地产经济和政治赞助的历史、考古学和地理学一起进行。该项目选择了威尔士和林肯郡中部两个已经启动工作的英国地区进行比较，并选择了其中的少量修道院进行详细关注。部署的方法来自现有的两个主要项目：一个是在威尔士塞雷迪金的佛罗里达州Strata的高地和抵抗的威尔士文化，在那里1184修道院被设计成可以追溯到新石器时代晚期或青铜时代早期的现有神圣景观；另一个是在林肯郡的巴林斯的低地和英国封建文化，在那里已经确定了类似的长期轨迹。这两个项目都确定了寺庙房屋和先前存在的具有神圣意义的景观之间的亲密和有意识地设计的关系。已经注意到，所创造的空间符合当代秩序的惯例、需求、宇宙观和教条，以及与社会结构和机构相适应的地方。以往的研究涉及实地调查、建筑物记录、遥感、地球物理和小规模挖掘，以及文献分析。这一方法将被比较地应用于选定的修道院，以确定这些设计原则得到了多么普遍的应用，以及它们在不同的秩序、文化和政治中如何变化。虽然我们将探索这些景观中的经济驱动因素，但我们将重点关注这些寺庙所从事的文化生产方式和再生产模式。因此，可以探索文字及其手稿、其意象及其意义与寺庙的空间设计和政治语境之间的关系。我们还将比较雕塑和建筑作为象征表现形式，并考虑它们各自的景观环境，作为传达与神圣景观的形而上学和情感关系的媒介。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在多大程度上持续下去，因为它们遇到了中世纪晚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，两个试点项目都广泛参与了社区互动和旅游经济中遗产的开发，通过运用研究见解，促进了对遗址及其圣地的智力和物质接触。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.