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Origin Period Start Year

This page groups sacred sites by the year their sacred standing is first dated to. Wikipedia notes that the relics of the apostle James "discovered c. 830" are what made Santiago de Compostela a pilgrimage destination. Browsing by start year lets a visitor compare how old one site's sacred status is against another's.

Facts

Overview

What Defines This Grouping

Places a tradition itself treats as holy, or as a centre of practice, grouped by the tradition that holds them so. The grounds recorded are the grounds the tradition gives - a theophany held to have happened there, the presence of relics, a landscape feature read as a sign, or long ritual use - and a place sacred to several traditions is recorded under each claim, not assigned to one owner. 1

Status

Standing as a Comparative Category

Standard. Sacred space is a standard analytic category in the study of religion. What is disputed is the explanation of it: whether holiness inheres in a place that discloses itself, or is conferred on a place by ritual and by human choice of where to act. The atlas records the grounds each tradition itself gives and does not settle that question. 1

Learn More

Places Treated as Holy

This category gathers the places traditions hold sacred or treat as centres of practice: temples, mountains, rivers, caves, oracles, stone circles and pilgrimage destinations. Each entry gives a location and the tradition or traditions for which the place is holy, and describes what is done there and why it is revered.

Sacredness is attached to places for many reasons (a theophany or miracle held to have occurred there, the presence of relics or a shrine, a striking feature of the landscape read as a sign, or long use as a site of ritual), and the entries record the grounds a tradition itself gives.

Layered and Contested Holiness

Many of the most important sites have been sacred to more than one tradition in succession or at once, and their history is one of reuse, sharing and sometimes conflict. A temple may stand where an older shrine stood; a single city or mountain may be holy to several religions with competing claims. The atlas records this layered history rather than assigning a place to one owner, and notes contested sites soberly.

The sites group by tradition (Hindu, Buddhist, Christian, Islamic, Jewish, Indigenous and many more), so a browser can narrow from all sacred places to those of one culture.

Origin Period Start Year

Connections

Showing the first 400 of 449 connections.

Sources

1. Encyclopedia of Religion

Mircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.), Macmillan Reference, 2005s.v. Sacred SpaceView the Source

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