| One obvious manifestation of the a-social character of the monasteries is the choice of their location in remote, and often hardly accessible sites. The placement of the church at the center of the site and the arrangment of the rest of the buildings in the remaining available site area becomes an expression of religious character. The contradiction between the two dispositions, the spiritual (or God-centered) and the secular (or man-centered), gives form and meaning to the stylistic expression of this enclosed world. The result is a hybrid that emerges from the conflict of the two contradictory tensions of the human nature. |
