The Symbolism of Churches and Church Ornaments is a translation of the first book of the Rationale Divinorum Officiorum, the great medieval treatise by the thirteenth-century bishop Guillaume Durand. It explains the spiritual and allegorical meaning of every part of the church building and its furnishings, from the foundations and walls to the altar, windows, and ornaments.
For Durand, the church is a symbol of heaven and of the Christian soul, and each architectural element carries layers of religious meaning. The work was enormously influential in shaping the medieval understanding of sacred architecture. This translation, with its learned introduction, makes accessible a key source for anyone studying Gothic churches and the symbolic ideas that gave their architecture its profound significance.