Sacred spaces versus holy sites

Abstract

Critics of hierotopy pointed out that a term including an explicit hint at the notion of the "site" was used to describe a methodological approach that basically concerns sacred spaces, i.e., spatial contexts being instrumental to the performance of liturgical rites. Churches, synagogues, and mosques can be rightly described as "sacred spaces", inasmuch as they work as meeting places intended for the performance of rites, individual and collective prayers, processions and ceremonies, yet they are not, or not necessarily, also holy sites. The site-specific quality of loca sancta implies that their worship could take place independently from any definite strategy of spatial or architectural arrangement. The study of how holy sites functioned and were involved in the religious - and social - experience is hampered by the still ambiguous terminology used in the humanities to categorize such cult-phenomena.

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