"Stained Glass in Catholic Philadelphia tells the remarkable story of the thousands of stained-glass windows - made in America, England, France, and Germany - in the more than 400 churches, chapels, and institutions of the five-county Archdiocese of Philadelphia. Since 1997 more than 450 sites have been visited to document the archdiocese's windows by photographing them. This process resulted in the creation of a photo archive of over 50,000 images. Using this archive as a foundation, a team of scholars - from a variety of institutions and with specialties in medieval studies, architectural and social history, Christian iconography, decorative and liturgical arts, the craft, creative reuse, and historic preservation of stained glass - was assembled to study these windows. The result is this profusely illustrated book of original research that makes accessible a significant and highly visible, but neglected, aspect of our ecclesial, national, and regional cultural heritage."--BOOK JACKET. Book jacket.