A photographic breviary. “Zodiaque” publications in the 20 th century

Abstract

In the 1950s, Christian thought was dominated by the 'debate on sacred art', in which numerous radical and dogmatic viewpoints on the 'revival' of religious art clashed. A group of Benedictine monks challenged the status quo and proposed a new approach to the issue; they laid down their ideas in an art review, which soon became a real publishing enterprise. Zodiaque publications enjoyed wide popularity for nearly fifty years, thanks to their use of photographs, which conveyed history much more poignantly than words. Architecture and sculpture thus gradually became independent of text, and at the same time thoroughly reshaped it. They created new, autonomous features, as if 'anointing' the book as an object; it now became both an object of aesthetic contemplation and an instrument of discovering national heritage.