The idea that formalized performative acts may manifest sacrosanctity spatially or in specific physical objects is often brought out in descriptions of ritual practices. Rituals of sanctification or dedication of sacred areas, temples, churches, and objects of veneration provide well-known examples: such areas, buildings, places, and objects, stand out as ritualized physical structures.
In the West, historically, such traditions have included hierarchies of sacred places (e.g. Jerusalem, Mecca, Rome), defined by mythical events and religious memory; sacred bodies (dead or alive) as manifested by different kinds of ordination or initiation (e.g. saints, kings, priests, ordinary Christians); sacred buildings, places, and objects (churches and monasteries with their precincts including graveyards; various kinds of vessels, reliquaries, altars, crucifixes, books, thrones, statues, pictures, etc). Each of these items has its individual placement within hierarchies of sacredness within particular communities, physically and spiritually, and is thereby endowed with some level of sacrosanctity.
A panel at the international Ritual conference at the University of Heidelberg in the fall of 2008 addressed presented several papers concerning this overall topic. Six of these are published in revised form in this section of the presentation of the results from the conference.