Uwe Michael Lang

Reverend Uwe Michael Lang is a priest of the Congregation of the Oratory of Saint Philip Neri in London and teaches at Mater Ecclesiae College, Saint Mary’s University, Twickenham. He is the author of Turning Towards the Lord.

Articles by Uwe Michael Lang

Church Building in Sri Lanka

Thanks to Portuguese missionary activity in the sixteenth century, the Catholic faith took root among the people along the seacoast of Ceilão (as Sri Lanka was known). 

House Churches and Sacred Space

This engaging book offers a fresh perspective on how Christians understood and embodied their liturgical worship in the first three centuries.

A Chorus of Praise

At a recent occasion, Pope Benedict XVI has called artists “custodians of beauty,” as his predecessors Paul VI and Blessed John Paul II had done before him. This title is significant, not least because in the Catholic tradition beauty is understood as a philosophical and ultimately theological category.

Tamquam Cor in Pectore: The Eucharistic Tabernacle Before and After the Council of Trent

In recent years, historical research has paid considerable attention to the relationship between liturgy and architecture. Much of this scholarship has focussed on Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, but there is also growing interest in the periods of the Renaissance and of the Catholic Reform both before and after the Council of Trent (1545-1563), as is evident from the proceedings of a conference held at the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florence in 2003. The editor of the volume, Jörg Stabenow, identifies two main developments that transformed the typical church interior in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. First, elements that divided the building into different sections were removed in order to create a unified space. By contrast, medieval churches were structured by a complex system of partitions, especially the rood screen separating the nave from the choir. Secondly, the tabernacle placed in a central position on the high altar was adopted as the common form of Eucharistic reservation and became the focal point of Baroque church architecture.