Monastir Sant Pere de Galligants, Girona (Girona) Photo by Jong-Soung Kimm The Monastery was begun in 992 outside the walls of Girona when Ramón Borrell, count of Barcelona deeded to the monks the right over the property of Sant Pere. Borrell made further donation the following year to put the fledgling monastery on firmer footing. […]
We have stated the intent of Via Lucis Photography to digitally document the Romanesque churches while trying to capture the hidden presence of medieval spirituality. PJ and I often discuss whether a church is “alive” or not. Sometimes that is a matter of an active religious life – churches like those of Thuret or Heume […]
Many people have asked us the location of the churches are that we write about, so about three years ago we started a project that showed all of the churches on Google Maps. We did this for France, Spain, and Germany. We used selectable layers and the solution worked well; readers were able to follow […]
A couple of years ago, PJ and I spent a holiday weekend in Providence, partly just to have a nice getaway but also to shoot at Saint Stephen’s Episcopal Church in East Providence and Saint Peter and Saint Paul Cathedral downtown. It was, as always, a pleasure to shoot in these beautiful structures, but we […]
In honor of our friends Ilene, Vincent, Ethan and Julian in White Plains, I would like to make this post for the festival of deliverance, Purim. On a day that celebrates a victory over Persian enemies, we illustrate a medieval victory over hatred and fear. The small town of Beaulieu-sur-Dordogne in the Corrèze features a […]
Every time we visit Saint Astremoine in Issoire, I cannot help but think of the impression it must of made in times less cluttered by man-made visual stimuli. This year during our visit I found myself in the south side of the ambulatory transfixed by the riot of patterns and color. I always try to […]
Situated on the Michaelshugel at the western edge of the historic core of Hildesheim, St. Michael’s Church (Michaelskirche) was built between 1010 and 1031 as the abbey church of a Benedictine monastery. Bishop Bernward, a tutor and adviser to Otto III, founded the monastery, and is believed to have had a strong influence on the […]
Together with Speyer and Mainz, Worms is one of the three “Imperial Cathedrals (Kaiserdom)” along the upper Rhein, one of the finest achievements of the High Romanesque architecture in Germany. The plan of Worms is based on a nave plus two aisles, both eastern and western choirs, one transept near the eastern apse with an […]
In early October last year, PJ and I returned to Conques for two days. While there, we saw something that took us back to the origins of this great pilgrimage church. In the late morning, I was photographing the tympanum over the west portal. This sculpture has the same subject as many similar works, the […]
The hundreds of posts on this blog should convince even the most casual reader of the creative genius displayed by the Romanesque builders. The buildings themselves, the sculptural and painted adornments, their positions in towns and in the country all attest to a fervor both religious and creative. Even the spatial orientation was important, almost […]
