“Worſhip the Lord in the Beauty of Holineſſe”: Church Architecture and English Liturgy, c. 1550-c. 1625

Abstract

This article explores Richard Hooker’s liturgical theology and his defence of ecclesiastical splendour against the critiques of radical Reformation thinkers. It argues that Hooker regarded sensation - understood as perception and sensibility rather than sentimentality - as a vital dimension of worship, complementing imitation and iteration. For Hooker, the “beauty of holiness” achieved its fullest expression not through iconography but through the spatial and material language of sacred architecture. The study unfolds in four parts. It first analyses the heuristic models underlying late sixteenth-century theories of sacred architecture. It then examines the concepts of hierotopy and hierotopics as frameworks for understanding the creation and experience of holy space. The third section reconciles the methodological approaches of hierotopics and liturgics in the study of Christian ritual practices, demonstrating how spatial design and liturgical performance interact as complementary modes of theological expression. The final section traces the legacy of Hooker’s liturgical aesthetics in the reconfiguration of sacred space by later figures such as Lancelot Andrewes, Richard Neile, and William Laud. Methodologically, the article combines historical analysis with insights from the material turn in the humanities, situating Hooker’s theology within wider debates on ritual and material culture. It concludes that Hooker’s conception of the “beauty of holiness” illuminates the theological aesthetics of the Late Tudor and Early Stuart Church of England and offers a distinctive perspective for contemporary ritual studies. His synthesis of theological reason, sensory experience, and architectural imagination demonstrates how Anglican worship sought to embody divine order through material splendour.