Humanities & social sciences research - Historic environment

The Experience of Worship in Late Medieval Cathedral and Parish Church

Dr Paul Barnwell, the Department’s Director of Studies for the Historic Environment, examines how surroundings may have informed religious experience.

Surprisingly little is known of how liturgy was performed in the late medieval period; still less is known about how it was understood and experienced by the participants: the priests, choir, and ordinary parishioners. And how might the experience differ between a large and wealthy cathedral (with many clergy, a large choir, and rich artefacts and utensils) and that of the humble rural parish church?

The Experience of Worship in Late Medieval Cathedral and Parish Church: Investigation, Realisation and Interpretation involves scholars from many disciplines: musicologists, practical theologians, anthropologists and sociologists of religion. They will develop ways of understanding the experience of late medieval worship through re-enactment.

The ‘laboratories’ for this project are Salisbury Cathedral and the church of St Teilo, recently moved to St Fagan’s: National History Museum of Wales. Dr Paul Barnwell’s remit within the project team is to co-ordinate investigation of the opportunities and constraints provided by these two very different architectural settings, and to test the extent to which it is possible to understand how they contributed to the creation of particular sensory, religious and emotional experiences.

The lead researcher on the project is Professor John Harper, Director of the International Centre for Sacred Music Studies at Bangor University. The project duration is three years from January 2010.