A Heretical History of Architecture challenges the conventional understanding of significant developments in Western architecture as a series of alignments among dominant ideologies and artistic programs, arguing instead that the most consequential changes in the evolution of artistic and design practices across Europe between the fifth and seventeenth centuries were motivated by tensions between local religious or cultural traditions and centralized power.

This groundbreaking study richly demonstrates the processes through which heterodox beliefs that persisted within numerous diverse communities resulted in design experimentation so syncretic that it has heretofore eluded scholars employing conventional Euro-centric taxonomies of architectural styles.