The Geometry of Love: Space, Time, Mystery, and Meaning in an Ordinary Church

Margaret Visser has one of the best stocked minds I've ever encountered. Educated as a Classics professor, she has expanded her publications to include the Colombian food exchanges, and this gem of a book. It deals with architecture and its details but is also an extended exploration of human our relationship with sacred spaces. And therefore with the concept of the sacred itself. To be read and reread.

The Sant' Agnese fouri le Mura church is named for a twelve year old girl named Agnes who was murdered in 305 A.D. Her throat was cut after she refused to marry the son of a Roman prefect. The name literally means "Saint Agnes Outside the Walls". In addition to a physical description of the church Visser supplies a mental and spiritual picture as well. She takes the reader on a journey back to the roots of Christianity with etymology lessons thrown in for good measure. My favorite part was the comparison of church to theater. Of audience and performance. Evocation of imagination and emotion in both arenas. Geometry of Love is for anyone with a good imagination and wants to "see" Sant' Agnese fouri le Mura church for him or herself.

Often brilliant and occasionally flawed anthropological reflection on a specific church in Rome, that brilliantly reflects some key symbols and themes (altars, bells, feminism) while retaining an interesting narrative. Some sensational choices of language mar sections - the author is a self-confessed subjective observer (a Catholic writing about Catholic history). Some sections, particularly those relating to contemporary public response to the place of a church, feel underdeveloped. The book nevertheless has great nuggets of information that make it more than worthy of a read.

A very careful, thoughtful, and complete examination of the history and meaning found in a Roman church. I have vowed that I absolutely must visit Sant'Agnese fuori le Mura as soon as an opportunity presents itself. Of course, as the author conveys, there are very many churches with similarly complex and enchanting stories (San Clemente springs to mind) and this book encourages us to reflect upon all of them.

an interesting idea gone wrong