{"id":4921,"date":"2006-02-03T11:45:20","date_gmt":"2006-02-03T11:45:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2006\/02\/the-meaning-behind-st-agnes.html"},"modified":"2006-02-03T11:45:20","modified_gmt":"2006-02-03T11:45:20","slug":"the-meaning-behind-st-agnes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/02\/the-meaning-behind-st-agnes.html","title":{"rendered":"The meaning behind St. Agnes"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Cranky Professor<\/a> very kindly sent me a spare copy of The Geometry of Love by Margaret Visser<\/a>, in preparation for our trip.<\/p>\n

In Zenit, Catherine Smibert writes today of a documentary currently being filmed, based on the book:<\/a><\/p>\n

\n
\n

In a city that can overwhelm you with religious art and architecture, one woman breaks it down and helps us take it home. She does this with the help of St. Agnes, whose feast was celebrated in a special way last week. <\/p>\n

The feast brought Margaret Visser to Rome once again, this time to film a documentary based on her book "The Geometry of Love: Space, Time, Mystery and Meaning in an Ordinary Church." <\/p>\n

Visser’s vision behind the book came from the observation that, though people know how to recognize a church, they often don’t comprehend the background, the symbolism or the story held within its walls. <\/p>\n

That’s her literary trademark — to take something obvious and return it filled with riches. The Roman basilica of St. Agnes Outside the Walls was selected for the task. <\/p>\n

"In my search for the perfect church, I remembered this one because it went ‘deep,’" explained the South African-born Catholic historian. "I had forgotten that you had to descend 45 steps in order to enter the place." <\/p>\n

She noted, "Already its design provided an example of the way in which a building can arouse in you a feeling, a meaning, an understanding, a desire \u2026 every stone manages to present Christian love, merely through their correct placement." <\/p>\n

It took Visser four years of research in seven languages to uncover all the secrets of the building. <\/p>\n

The director of the new documentary, Paul Carvalho, said he found it challenging to translate into visual imagery many of the concepts presented in Visser’s scholarly writing. <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Cranky Professor very kindly sent me a spare copy of The Geometry of Love by Margaret Visser, in preparation for our trip. In Zenit, Catherine Smibert writes today of a documentary currently being filmed, based on the book: In a city that can overwhelm you with religious art and architecture, one woman breaks it…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":180,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4921","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nThe meaning behind St. Agnes - Via Media<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/02\/the-meaning-behind-st-agnes.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The meaning behind St. Agnes - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The Cranky Professor very kindly sent me a spare copy of The Geometry of Love by Margaret Visser, in preparation for our trip. 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The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4921","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4921"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4921\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4921"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4921"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4921"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}