Light on Darkness
The Untold Story of the Liturgy
Cosima Clara Gillhammer’s fresh history text Light on Darkness shows how Christian liturgy shaped Western civilization.
Beginning with Western European worship during the Middle Ages, the book traces Christian liturgy’s influence on Western arts and culture into contemporary times, showing how its rites, rituals, prayers, songs, and actions became a means of expressing theological teachings and timeless, universal human experiences and emotions. For example, since medieval times, dramatic Holy Saturday enactments of the power of Jesus’s light to banish darkness are used to represent the “dawning” of spiritual awareness.
The book takes a multidisciplinary approach to trace how liturgical rites performed in seasonal cycles informed and shaped human lives through relatable stories and enactments. Drawing on medieval manuscripts, ancient artworks, and liturgical texts, it unpacks the metaphors and meanings found therein, translates them for a modern audience, and links them to contemporary writings, music, art, and drama. For example, early plainchant settings of the biblical psalms and modern compositions like Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah” and Scottish composer James MacMillan’s Miserere exhibit shared, potent human emotions even though they’re separated by thousands of years.
Written in a conversational tone, the book presents liturgy as a timeless dialogue between human beings and God and an efficient means of reaching large audiences with Christian teachings. By linking liturgy with the perennial human drive to create, learn, and grow, the book makes a compelling case for its influence on Western culture. Auditory and visual examples of the music, art, and literature referred to are made available on an accompanying website.
Light on Darkness is an enlightening history text about the influence of Christian liturgy on Western arts and culture.
Reviewed by
Kristine Morris
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