St. Dennis Church: A Historical and Architecturally Significant Site
St. Dennis is a Christian martyr and a saint in line with the traditions of Christians. He was said to have taken up his head after his beheading, and he paced six miles preaching salvation all the way. St. Dennis's head was taken to the site of the present church, the spot where he wished to be buried. The Church of St. Dennis has been synonymous with the most historically and architecturally important buildings and representatives of the Gothic styles. It's an art site that acts as an architectural record.
Significance of History and Architecture
The church was initially the site of the pagan cemetery. It changed to a Christian cemetery after some time. Its Gothic style of building provides significance and history. The features of this art that make the technique outstanding include the pointed arch, the ribbed vault, and the flying buttress. These features were the most common characteristics of several Romanesque buildings whereby one of the major achievements in the 12th and the early 13th century was using the engineering skills to develop significant buildings which later became taller and broader in succession.
The skilled used of the construction features makes it architecturally significant. The pointed arch enhanced more elaboration and complication of the ground plans that hitherto. Moreover, the buttressing skills improve the building of taller buildings and opening up of the wall space than intervene to create larger windows. These features remained, bringing historical significance of the church.
How It Represents Gothic Styles
Saint Denis Church is one of the earliest building that represents the Gothic styles in a way that the techniques were used in the highly sophisticated plan of architecture. The first feature that describes this style is that the chapels and the ambulatory belong to the phase of highly designed structure. There is the subjective effect of the chain windows that around the building region gives the church the feature of being the first Gothic building. The proportions chapel are small, but the precision and the skill of managing the vaulting also gives the church the claim of being a representative of the Gothic style (Gothic Art And Architecture, 2017).
Further, the abbot of Saint-Dennis was the driving figure, Suger. He wrote about the personal aesthetic of light that reflects the infinite light of God. Something similar to this reflection was also availed soon, bringing some liturgical inconvenience that became a common architectural division at later days. This feature made Saint-Denis have a subsequent history as a Gothic building.
Innovations
One of the changes in the churches today is the organic house churches. The pioneer of this is Neil Cole who believes that reproduction of churches needs to be simple and easy. According to him, gig church is unnecessary but reproducing church is crucial. Quality church is also not necessary, what is important is the transforming church. An example is the China's Bamboo Curtain church that is the region of the amazing growth of Christianity.
Another innovation among churches is the recovery churches. Today, The ministry of recovery originated from the Saddleback Church which has a curriculum that can be transferred, the Celebrate Recovery. The example of recovery church is the NorthStar Community Church located in Richmond, Virginia.
Multi-Site Churches also add to the innovation in churches. These churches have specially equipped rooms which are separately accessible by worshippers of different categories.
Conclusion
Saint-Denis Church is a historical church with its past changes that provide significance of innovation in the churches today.
Reference
Gothic Art And Architecture. (2017). History-world.org. Retrieved 18 March 2017
