This book investigates the concept of the New Jerusalem, the City of God, as an architectural ideal during the middle ages, and the way in which it is represented allegorically in patristic writings, liturgy, building, and later literature. The author begins by examining its conceptual foundations in such sources as the Hebrew Bible, Bede's exegesis, the religious philosophy of Plotinus, and Augustine's theology. She then explores the influence and the expression of the New Jerusalem in liturgy and architecture, using the twelfth-century remodelling of the Abbey Church of St-Denis and its...