A Temple to Perspective whose structure would represent the age of the earth, with each centimetre of height equating to 1 million years. Measuring 46 metres in all, the tower would feature, at its base, a tiny band of gold a mere millimetre thick, standing for mankind’s time on earth. (illustration credit 9.6)
— A Temple to Reflection
It is one of the unexpected disasters of the modern age that our new unparalleled access to information has come at the price of our capacity to concentrate on anything much. The deep, immersive thinking which produced many of civilization’s most important achievements has come under unprecedented assault. We are almost never far from a machine that guarantees us a mesmerizing and libidinous escape from reality. The feelings and thoughts which we have omitted to experience while looking at our screens are left to find their revenge in involuntary twitches and our ever-decreasing ability to fall asleep when we should.
Because we are drawn in architecture to styles which seem to possess some of the qualities we lack in ourselves, it is little wonder that we should be readily seduced by spaces that are purified and free of distraction, and in which stimuli have been reduced to a minimum — places, perhaps, where the view has been carefully framed to take in a few rocks, or the branches of a tree, or a patch of sky, where the walls are solid, the materials are enduring and the only sound to be heard is that of wind or flowing water.
A Temple to Reflection would lend structure and legitimacy to moments of solitude. It would be a simple space, offering visitors little beyond a bench or two, a vista and a suggestion that they set to work on unravelling some of the troubling themes that they have been using their normal activity to suppress.
It is only in the age of the BlackBerry that large numbers of people can finally sense why monasteries were originally invented: Gougane Barra church, County Cork, Ireland, 1879. (illustration credit 9.7)
A place to lie in wait for the shy, elusive insights: a Temple to Reflection. (illustration credit 9.8)
There is a devilishly direct relationship between the significance of an idea and how nervous we become at the prospect of having to think about it. We can be sure that we have something especially crucial to address when the very notion of being alone grows unbearable. For this reason, religions have always been forceful in recommending that their followers observe periods of solitude, however much discomfort these might at first provoke. A modern Temple to Reflection would follow this philosophy, creating ideally reassuring conditions for contemplation, allowing us to wait in a restful bare room for those rare insights upon which the successful course of our life depends, but which normally run across our distracted minds only occasionally and skittishly like shy deer.
— A Temple for the Genius Loci
Among the more intriguing features of Imperial Roman religion was that it not only provided for the worship of cosmopolitan gods such as Juno and Mars (whose temples could be found all across the empire, from Hadrian’s Wall to the banks of the Euphrates) but also allowed for the reverence of a panoply of local deities, whose personalities reflected the character, either topographical or cultural, of their native regions. These protective spirits, known as ‘genii locorum’, were given temples of their own and developed reputations — which sometimes drew travellers to them from afar — for being able to cure a variety of ailments of the mind and body. The spirits from the coastline south of Naples, for example, were thought to be particularly well suited to the abatement of melancholy, while the genius loci of Colonia Iulia Equestris (modern-day Nyon, on the shore of Lake Geneva) was supposed to have a special talent for consoling those oppressed by the vagaries of political and commercial life.
Like so much else that seems sensible about Roman religion, the tradition of the genius loci was absorbed by Christianity, which made comparable connections between specific localities and their curative powers, though it chose to talk of shrines rather than temples, and of saints instead of spirits. The map of medieval Europe was dotted with holy sites, many of them built upon Roman foundations, which promised to grant the faithful relief from their physical and mental ills via contact with assorted body parts of dead Christian saints.
A Pilgrimage Map of Medieval Europe (illustration credit 9.9)
Altotting, Germany
Staving off the Plague (Virgin Mary)
Bad Munstereifel, Germany
Excessive Fears of Lightning (St Donatus)
Barrios de Colina, Spain
Infertility (San Juan de Ortega)
Buxton, England
Miracle Healings (St Anne)
Chartres, France
Burning Disease (St Anthony)
Conques, France
Soldiers before a Battle (St Foy)
Dubrovnik, Croatia
Throat Problems (St Blaise)
Hereford, England
Palsy (St Ethelbert)
Larchant, France
Madness (St Mathurin)
Lourdes, France
Magical Healing (St Bernadette)
Morcombelake, England
Sore Eyes (St Wite)
Padua, Italy
Lost Things (St Anthony of Padua)
Rome, Italy; Basilica of San Lorenzo
Painful Molar (St Apollonia)
Spoleto, Italy
Unhappily Married Women