Geometry of Love: Space, Time, Mystery, And Meaning In An Ordinary Church

In this brilliant work, award-winning author Margaret Visser takes one church, Sant' Agnese fuori le Mura in Rome, and tells us what it means. Visser casts her net widely and looks at history, theology, anthropology, art history and technology, iconography, hagiography, and folklore in order to explain this one small building. The book ends at the church's beginning, with the grave of Agnes, a twelve-year-old girl who was murdered seventeen hundred years ago and whose remains lie buried beneath the church. With her extraordinary gift for giving life and meaning to seemingly ordinary objects, Visser reveals the spiritual, cultural, and historical riches that any church can offer. The symbolism of lambs, the Christian fascination with virgins, a consideration of the meanings of martyrdom, the catacombs, the history of relics - all are explored in Margaret Visser's trademark blend of wisdom, wit, and first-rate scholarship.