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( Source: Yuriy Beyger / iStockphoto )
In today’s secular times, this is hard to imagine for most people, but for most of history, church buildings and grounds were the real centres of life for the whole of society at the time. And this is not only true for Christian society; the same was true in ancient times. Church buildings have, of course, also influenced our own country and its landscape.
Temple complexes and monasteries have been built across civilisations and millennia. They have played a key role in shaping the spiritual and social life of a given society. Already in Mesopotamia and ancient Egypt, magnificent temples were built, where, as in Greece and Rome, they served not only to worship deities but also as places of divination and cult rituals. However, they also became healing centres as well as political and social centres. In our region, the Celts, the Germans and the Slavs built their spiritual centres in pre-Christian times. And after all, even caves with paintings of prehistoric mammoth hunters may have served as shrines for their inhabitants, where some ancient deities were invoked to bring hunters success in their hunt. These places are also part of our spiritual history, but very few of them have survived, and the main part of them is associated with Christian temples and monasteries.
━━ The most famous cathedral in the world is probably Notre-Dame in Paris.
( Source: Sergii Figurnyi / Shutterstock )
Monasteries and cathedrals grew like mushrooms in medieval Europe. But even if the spiritual world of medieval man is far from us today, it would be a great mistake to look down on this time or to look down on it. It was the Benedictines, the Cistercians, the Dominicans and members of other orders who not only preserved the ancient manuscripts and thus the learning of antiquity, but also contributed to the development of agriculture or medicine. Although many of the old churches and monasteries have been destroyed or converted, their legacy still endures. Not only do they give us an insight into the history and spiritual world of our ancestors, but they also serve as inspiration for modern architecture, art and philosophy. Last but not least, it is the religious monuments that still define the character of our landscape today. In this case, it is mainly the Baroque country churches, but it is also the small monuments in the form of the so-called ‘gods’ or wayside crosses. They may not be monumental, but they are a link to the simplest, folk spirituality of our ancestors. The legacy of old monasteries, temples, country churches or simple stone crosses is still alive. And it will live on for as long as the nation exists. For they are an integral part of its very spirit.
