ABSTRACT
The house of God is “the pillar and ground of truth”. The Bible, with its many allusions to the symbolic meaning of buildings, lays the basis for the iconographic interpretation of medieval architecture. Christian authors such as Hrabanus Maurus, Bernard of Clairvaux, Abbot Suger, and Durandus compiled ideas concerning the symbolism of churches and their parts for their contemporaries. By the fourth century, the Apostolic Constitutions had already introduced a symbolic reading of the Church by using the simile of a ship. The discussion of “temple” by Isidore, and then Hrabanus Maurus, is enlightening insofar as understanding the orientation of most Christian churches. The concept of the anthropomorphic column had far-reaching consequences in medieval architecture. Before the rise of monumental sculpture, the anthropomorphic column was frequently given life with painted or mosaic decoration.
