On this page I would like to share with you my recent readings in liturgical architecture.
I have of late been reading everything by Sible de Blaauw. He is a professor of art history specializing in early Christian art and architecture at the University of Radboud, Nijmegen in The Netherlands. I discovered first his monumental two-volume study Cultus et Decor in which he presents the architecture and liturgy celebrated in three Roman basilicas – the Lateran, St Peter’s, St Mary Major – arranged according to successive historical periods.
(University web-page click on “Onderzoek” for an extensive bibliography in Dutch, German, French, Italian; Academia.edu web-page with several downloadable articles).
BLAAUW, Sible de., Cultus et decor: Liturgia e architettura nella Roma tardoantica e medievale, 2 vol. (Studi e Testi 355, 356), Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Città del Vaticano 1994 (earlier version in Dutch by Eburon, Delft The Netherlands 1987). The later Italian version is available from the Vatican Library shop where you can order volume 1 and volume 2; you can see the plans of these churches in different eras beginning on p. 616 in the Dutch version of the book partially avaiable via GoogleBooks here).
I am currently reading:
BLAAUW, Sible de, “Architecture and Liturgy in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages: Traditions and Trends in Modern Scholarship”, Archiv für Liturgiewissenschaft 33 (1991) 1-34.
This review of the literature up to 1991 spans the fields of architecture and liturgy. Because of his facilities with numerous languages (Dutch, German, French, Italian, English), this review crosses many linguistic boundaries and provides his comments in English.