Sacred and Profane: Defining Sacred Space Through Context
Historians of the medieval and early modern periods have, for the most part, up to
now preferred to study the law, geography and architecture of sacred spaces rather
than how they were defined. Studies have thus focused not on rites and the practice
of prayer, nor on informal ‘secret-sacred’ spaces, but rather on ecclesiastical
buildings and shrines.21 In the early Church, saints’ tombs became the setting for
ecclesiastical buildings, which in turn acquired sanctity by association. As these
sites became the foci for pilgrimages, the routes to them became sanctified, and the
chapels along the route also came to be regarded as sacred.22 This paradigm holds
equally true for sites established in the Middle Ages, such as the pilgrimage routes
to the shrine of St James at Compostella.23 At the same time recent work has
demonstrated that medieval ideas about protected space and legal sanctuary were
not so much a consequence of ideas of zones of holiness radiating out from a
shrine, although these too played a part, but rather the result of dynamic and