Romano Guardini & Marie-Alain Couturier

The Sources of Architecture and Art for the 20th Century Catholic Liturgy

Abstract

With this communication, in whose center are two religious personalities of great prestige, I try to contribute to the maturation of the historical awareness of what has happened in the Catholic area in the first half of the 20th century, around the theme of art and architecture directly related to the liturgy, connected therefore with the broad theological, liturgical and cultural renewal that has crossed the Catholic world and that has led, between 1962 and 1965, in the Second Vatican Council. The temporal space to which I refer here includes the period between the two world wars and some event of the first decade following the second.

Also, in the brevity of the reflections that this congress allows, my contribution has been structured from the commitment, already unpostponable, to give way to the historicization of a process still too little known, that has often been recovered only in terms of militant alignment, for or against its characteristics and the contingencies of the historical moment, circumstances and options in the midst of those that have seen the light.