"Space is something abstract, without any substantial meaning. While place refers to how people are aware of/attracted to a certain piece of space. A place can be seen as space that has a meaning."

Anything designed for a single purpose brings with it a purity and clarity of function. A meat grinder does one thing and does it with aplomb. A mousetrap is the ideal tool to have on hand if the goal is the trapping of mice. The moment multiple purposes are introduced, however, the situation becomes more complex - and even more so if those purposes are at odds with each other. What purpose is a priority? Are design choices a question of compromise? Or do they in fact compromise each other?

Fortified Churches are just such a study in contradictions. A house of worship is intended to be a place of peace; a fortress is a place of conflict. A sanctuary should be open to all who wish to enter, yet a fortress requires robust walls, bastions, structures of exclusion. These buildings are the physical embodiment of conflicting ideals: inclusion and exclusion, peace and war, prosperity and fear. Their mere existence suggests a story; for a fortified church is built for one group and is intended as protection against another.

This project examines the extent of church fortifications throughout Europe, using comparative digital humanities based geospatial analysis of large-scale data as well as more intensive individual case studies. Through the use of methods that have yet to be applied to this field, this project aims to determine how the intersection of culture and topography impacts the placement of different styles of fortified church throughout Europe. Given the geographic, temporal, and cultural diversity of fortified churches, this research would look to find both commonalities and differentiating characteristics between different “clusters” of fortified churches. In its most reduced form, then, the research question for this dissertation is: What factors determine the locations of fortified churches, and how consistent are these factors between different regions?

Given the moderate volume of scholarship on the subject thus far, this research approaches the subject in two novel ways. First, by identifying and collecting assorted theories on Fortified Church placement, and then rigorously testing each for veracity. Second, by scaling up the area and volume of sites under examination, taking advantage of GIS to showcase trends without getting mired in exceptions and individual case studies.

Examinations of current literature on the topic find a wide variety of different explanations for fortress church locations, among them:
As a direct response to the Mongol Invasion of 1241-1242 and external threats.
Fear of Ottoman incursions.
Fear of Pagan pushback.
As a continuation of the legacy of the Teutonic Knights, crusader orders, Saxons, or other specific groups.
As a demonstration of “peasant fortifications” - intended for use by common people.
There are also a number of theories which explicitly address geographic placement:
Placement on hills.
Placement in foothills.
The desire to use church towers as watchtowers.
Strategic placement to create a barrier/chain against incursion.

Other work aims to show these structures as inheritors of different legacies: sometimes an evolution of Roman fortification concepts, sometimes as a twist on monastic protection and isolation.

This research brings together an array of different methods and offers further insights into both similarities and differences across Europe’s fortified churches. This work builds upon a significant amount of mapping and research done by historians in the 1800s, whose interest in the medieval era led to the creation of some of the most detailed material available. There is therefore naturally a massive amount of georeferencing involved, as well as other approaches to pinpointing (sometimes no longer extant) locations via satellite imagery. Viewshed analysis, least cost path, and intervisibility analysis all come into play as well.

Research thus far has demonstrated that many of these theories capture only small aspects of larger issues or are downright false, often mired in nationalistic ideology. Testing of them provides initial results indicating that the prevailing narratives on fortified church placement are deeply flawed. In Transylvania, for example, fortified churches do not tend to appear on either hills or in foothills; they are more commonly found in areas which lack natural protection. They also do not tend to have any form of interconnected intervisibility, or at least no more so than non-fortified churches: there is nothing that indicates that they were placed with the intent to create some form of barrier or fence. They do not, in general, have any greater view area than non-fortified churches, indicating that they were not designed to be dedicated watchtowers.

Other forms of fortified churches demonstrate very different placement logic. Irish round towers do seem to have more expansive views than other comparable churches, indicating that they were indeed intended to survey the area.

This is a methodologically and spatially diverse endeavor. It also shines a light on the spread of different contexts in which they were developed: whether it is internal strife, coastal protection, or militarizing borders, there are rather different outcomes. This work necessarily combines a number of different approaches - both digital and textual - to offer a more complete view of fortified churches in context.