Publishing in association with The National Churches Trust, this book offers a luxurious guide to the amazing architecture, art and furniture found in Churches across England.

Simon Jenkins has travelled the length and breadth of England to select his thousand best churches. Organised by county, each church is described - often with delightful asides - and given a star-rating from one to five. All of the county sections are prefaced by a map locating each church, and lavishly illustrated with colour photos from the Country Life archive. Jenkins contends that these churches house a gallery of vernacular art without equal in the world. Here, he brings that museum to public attention.

This celebration of some of the greatest art, architecture and furniture to be found in English churches offers a fascinating account of centuries of accumulated wealth, and is set off by a selection of breathtaking photographs by Matthew Byrne. It covers changing architectural styles across the centuries, and prominent examples of artistic work, including stained glass, rood screens, church monuments and curious carvings. This book is published in association with The National Churches Trust, a national, independent charity dedicated to supporting church buildings across the UK.

The author concentrates on the furnishing and works of art to be found in English parish churches from Saxon times to the 20th century. The book consists of a fairly short narrative text and a useful gazetteer complimented by detailed photographs.

"The wide variety of selections from Frederic Edwin Church's collection of his own paintings shows the master in all phases of his career, in sketches and finished paintings, depicting the breadth of his subjects and the high technical skills that established him as an eminent and influential artist in his own time. As works he held on to or reacquired and kept in his house during his lifetime, they embody the heart of his artistic vision and convey a deeply personal slant. As pictures he hung and lived with at Olana, they tell the larger story of that extraordinary place and are as illuminating when seen in context as on their own."--from the IntroductionFrederic Edwin Church (1826-1900) traveled the world, captured its beauty in countless paintings, and brought it home to live at Olana, his castle on the Hudson. The name was inspired by a reference Church found to a fortress or a treasury-storehouse in ancient Persia. This extraordinary selection of Church's paintings from his collection at Olana puts the most cherished of his treasures on full display in a volume that includes eighty color plates.Church's paintings, among the most acclaimed examples of art of the Hudson River School, are found in museums and private collections around the globe. However, Church kept some of his art close by during his lifetime. The rich collection that remains at Olana includes about seven hundred pieces, including notebooks, drawings, and oils, both sketches and completed canvases. They cover the full range of Church's career chronologically and thematically. The highlights from his personal collection are found in the touring exhibition that accompanies this book. The introduction by John Wilmerding and a substantial essay by Kevin J. Avery place the work into the context of Church's life and travels and examine Church's influences and the public reception of his art. Throughout Treasures from Olana, they discuss how profoundly Church's hilltop home and the surrounding landscape inspired and informed his work. His paintings, in turn, illuminate Olana more than a century after his death. The Olana Partnership, Hudson, N.Y., and New York State's Office of Parks, Recreation, and Historic Preservation, Albany, N.Y., organized Treasures from Olana: Landscapes by Frederic Edwin Church.

This revised edition incorporates the additions and corrections recorded by Erwin Panofsky until the time of his death in 1968. Gerda Panofsky-Soergel has updated the commentary in the light of new material, and the bibliography that she has prepared reflects the scholarship on St.-Denis in the last three decades. She has obtained some additional and more recent photographs, and the illustrations include a new ground plan and a new section of the chevet of the Abbey Church, both drawn under the supervision of Sumner McKnight Crosby.

Tens of thousands of American adults join the Catholic Church every year. Why? What is it that attracts them to Catholicism? In Confessions of a Mega-Church Pastor, Allen Hunt unveils the treasures of Catholicism that many life-long Catholics are simply unaware of. At the same time he demonstrates the genius of Catholicism and encourages us to move beyond taking our faith for granted. With a personal touch that is profound and disarming, Hunt takes his readers on a journey that is sure to change the way we experience our faith. At a time when so many are disillusioned about where the Catholic Church is and where it is going, Allen Hunt brilliantly reminds us that personal holiness is the key to the bigger future God wants to leads us to both as individuals and together as a Church.

This book traces the origins, economic development, and later history of church treasures, and explores the forms and function of these objects of memory and wonder.00Precious metalwork, relics, chess pieces, ostrich eggs, unicorn horns, and bones of giants were among the treasury objects accumulated in churches during the Middle Ages. The material manifestations of a Christian worldview, they would only later become naturalia and objets d?art, from the sixteenth and the nineteenth century onwards, respectively.00Philippe Cordez traces the rhetorical origination, economic development, and later history of church treasures, and explores the forms and functions of the memorial objects that constituted them. Such objects were a source of wonder for their contemporaries and remain so today, albeit for quite different reasons. Indeed, our fascination relates primarily to their epistemic and aesthetic qualities. Dealing also with these paradigm shifts, this study opens up new paths toward an archeology of current scholarly and museum practices.0Philippe Cordez is Deputy Director of the German Center for Art History in Paris.

- New edition of this exploration of one of Britain's greatest buildings - A comprehensive, beautifully illustrated survey of Westminster Abbey's art treasures Westminster Abbey has a history stretching back over a thousand years. Founded as a Benedictine monastery in the mid-tenth century, it is the coronation church where monarchs have been crowned amid great splendor since 1066. The present church, begun by Henry III in 1245, is a treasure house of architectural and artistic achievement on which each succeeding century has left its mark. The medieval and Renaissance tombs within the Abbey, though among the most important in Europe, form only a small part of the extraordinary collection of gravestones, memorials and monumental sculpture for which it has long been famous. Ranging from the thirteenth-century shrine of St Edward and the Renaissance splendor of Henry VII's Lady Chapel, to the literary memorials of Poets' Corner and the statues of twentieth-century martyrs on the Abbey's west front, this book describes the stained glass, furniture, sculpture, textiles, wall paintings and many other historic artefacts found within this remarkable church. Contents: Introduction; Edward the Confessor's Chapel; Sacrarium and High Altar; Quire and Crossing; North Transept and Ambulatory; South Ambulatory and Transept; Nave; Lady Chapel; Cloisters; Abbey Precincts.