All Saints Monastery of Watschnadsiani
The All Saints Monastery of Watschnadziani ( Georgian ვაჩნაძიანის ყველაწმინდა , Watschnadsianis Qwelazminda ) is a former Georgian Orthodox monastery near the village of Watschnadziani ( called Schroma in Soviet times ) in Gurdschaani district in eastern Georgia . The main church of the monastery named after All Saints' Day ( Georgian Qwelazminda ) was the Church of Our Lady from the 9th century. Its complex, “baroque” architecture combines a three-church basilica and a central building , which is surmounted by a high dome . The architecturally significant building introduced the pendent dome in Georgia and is considered an essential starting point for the development of classical Georgian church architecture from the 11th century.
location
Coordinates: 41 ° 48 ′ 37 " N , 45 ° 36 ′ 32" E
Watschnadsiani is located about 16 kilometers southeast of Telavi on the road towards Gurdschaani , which runs along the edge of a wide plain, through which the Alasani flows, with grain and vineyards. The wooded foothills of the Gomboris Kedi mountain range, which rises up to almost 2000 meters, begin south of the road. Near a modern church in Watschnadsiani, a road branches off towards the southwest into the mountains, which ends after eight kilometers at the church. It leads about a kilometer up through open pastureland with peach trees and then through dense deciduous forest. At the end of 2012, the dirt road was partially eroded by deep ruts and only accessible by truck. When it rains, puddles of mud form on the way. Shortly after the top of the pass, the former monastery is hidden in a small hollow on the slope between tall trees.
Architectural-historical development
The earliest Georgian church architecture in the 5th century ( Sioni Church of Bolnissi ) mainly took inspiration from western Syria for the construction of simple hall churches and the first three-aisled basilicas of the 6th and 7th centuries. The latter include the Urbnisi monastery church and the first church of the Watschnadsiani monastery from the 6th century. As a typical Georgian development, the three-church basilica with three separate naves inside was created for liturgical reasons at the beginning of the 6th century. Round churches (such as Bana ) and central buildings (Dsweli-Gawasi with four conches ) represented a special creation at that time.
This phase of development of several clear forms of the classical period followed in the 8th / 9th centuries. Century was a transition period, during which the central buildings were extended to the west by basilica naves and the drum under the dome was raised. Complicated floor plans and elevations emerged from the connection of previous forms of construction until a common Georgian architectural style emerged in the second heyday at the beginning of the 11th century.
The Church of the Savior in Zromi , built at the beginning of the 7th century, represents a link in the development. For the first time in Georgia it introduced four free-standing pillars on which the drum and dome rest. The resulting structure of the cross-domed church and the gallery in the west aisle, which was also newly added in Zromi, were reflected in the first significant church building from the transition period, the All Saints Church of Gurdschaani . This three-aisled basilica from the 8th or 9th century has an upper floor reserved for the nobility and a unique double-domed roof. The neighboring Church of the Mother of God in Watschnadsiani has a more complicated architecture than Gurdschaani and is therefore dated somewhat later to the 9th century. There are no exact dates from either church.
Monastic life in the Kakheti region in eastern Georgia was in distress from the 8th century due to the Muslim emirate of Tbilisi , which is why many monks retreated to Tao-Klardschetien in what is now northeastern Turkey and there - far from the Arab threat - starting from Opiza founded by monasteries. Nevertheless, numerous building remains from the 6th to 9th centuries were located within a radius of three kilometers around the village of Watschnadsiani. The foundation walls of a small church from this time have been preserved next to today's local church on the thoroughfare.
Church of the Mother of God
The building measures 27.5 × 17.5 meters, in the eastern part the width increases to 19.5 meters. The height to the top of the vault is 21 meters. The walls are made of roughly hewn field stones of different sizes in almost horizontal layers. Bricks were used for the arches, vaults and the dome. For the outer walls of the drum, carefully hewn blocks made of porous tuff with a smooth surface were used . In 2012, basic safety measures and restorations were carried out on the entire building, which have not yet been completed.
The main church of the monastery consists in the center of a square round arch construction supported by four pilasters , which merges into the circular shape of the drum via pendentives in the corners. The wall pillars are about 1.5 meters wide and protrude far into the room. The lower cornice is missing on the tambour; it begins immediately above the pendentives, as was done in Byzantine architecture since the 6th century. This is the earliest pendant dome in Georgia, possibly in the entire Caucasus . The two broad belt arches separate adjacent, transverse rooms of the same size in the west and east. They are covered by barrel vaults that merge into conches at the ends. Together with the semicircular apse , the eastern room forms the altar area in the shape of a three-conch choir . The two side rooms of the apse ( pastophoria ) are also designed as trikonchos with a square center. They are directly connected to the central apse via narrow wall openings and at the same time open to vestibules adjoining to the west, which in turn are connected to the barrel-vaulted transverse room.
The east part of the building, which is extremely complex overall, faces a central nave, which is separated from the aisles by partition walls, like a three-church basilica. The south aisle is longer and ends with an apse on the east belt arch on the line of the chancel. The north aisle with its round apse extends only over a third of the total length of the church to the western belt arch; it has a separate outer door in the north wall. At the end of 2012, during restoration work, the bones of a church superior were exposed here in the ground in front of the apse. The main entrance in the west wall initially leads into a square anteroom ( narthex ) with a passage to the central nave and connections to the aisle. Another entrance is in the middle of the south facade.
The pastophoria are vaulted in the middle by a dome, the transition of which is made from the square over trumpets , the older gusset shape known in Georgia since the 6th century. The side cones of the barrel vaulted ceilings are also formed with trumpets. The narthex is vaulted by a flat dome with trumpets over the entrance area protruding from the center of the west wall. This points to the experimental character of the pendentives on the central dome.
A staircase leads to the northern gallery through a small room in the middle of the north wall, the three arched windows of which offer a view of the central nave. There was obviously no stairway to the southern gallery, it could only have been accessible via the upper floor of the narthex. The lateral galleries are vaulted by transverse barrels, which together with the longitudinal orientation of the central nave create a cross shape.
The inner room divisions and height levels have an effect on the design of the outer structure, the plastic structure of which represents an exact representation of the building structure. While in Gurdschaani the outer walls form a simple rectangle, here the three apses with polygonal surfaces emerge from the east wall. Gable roofs arranged in the shape of a cross rise up to the central tambour in three steps in the heights of aisles, narthex and galleries. The drum is encased on twelve sides on the outside, its smooth wall surfaces break through four narrow window openings in the cardinal directions. The dome ends with a pyramid roof on the outside . The strong elevation tendency that first appeared here anticipates the elevation in the later cathedrals of the 10th and 11th centuries, for example in the monastery church of Alaverdi north of Telavi.
Opposite the church of Zromi, the nave of Watschnadsiani is stretched a little longer in an east-west direction, but without becoming a typical basilica. The spatial effect is visually shortened by the wide belt arches of the dome and the mighty wall pillars over which they arch. The wall pillars replace the free-standing pillars by Zromi. There are clear parallels to the Hagia Sophia, built between 532 and 537 in Istanbul. There are similar barrel vaulted rooms with conches in the east and west as abutments for the dome. In both cases, the square central space is closed in the north and south by walls that reach up to the belt arches. The window openings of the galleries can be seen as a greatly simplified adoption of the window zones in the arched fields of these walls of the Hagia Sophia. On the upper floor, the church of Watschnadsiani approaches the urban Byzantine tradition, while the church space on the ground floor, which is surrounded by closed walls, corresponds to the peripheral Georgian tradition of the three-church basilica.
Syrian Christians could be considered as mediators of the Byzantine tradition, since connections between Syria and Georgia can be proven. The palace complex Qasr ibn Wardan , which was built in the Syrian desert under Emperor Justinian in the middle of the 6th century , included a church that is considered to be a direct successor to Hagia Sophia. The Byzantine pendant dome, previously unknown in Syria, was used here. For economic and political reasons, the end of the Christian tradition in the Syrian Dead Cities and the entire region came to an end at the end of the 6th century . According to tradition, the “Thirteen Syrian Fathers” who were connected to the monastery of Symeon Stylites the Younger or who came from Jerusalem according to a different view were Georgians who returned to Georgia as missionaries in the 6th century. Their names have been passed down as founders of several monasteries. It is possible that the emigrants continued their Syrian building tradition in Zromi. Watschnadsiani was an important work of the transition period, in which urban-Byzantine influences can be identified, which later led to the Georgian church architecture that is still typical today in the independent Georgian connection of the basilica and the central building.
More buildings
About 50 meters to the west are the ruins of a three-aisled basilica between the trees. According to style studies, it is dated to the 6th or 7th century. The straight east wall and a few meters of the side walls restored for stabilization have been preserved. The central horseshoe-shaped apse had a large arched window; two narrow window openings let hardly any light into the side rooms that were not connected to the apse via doors. The central nave was significantly raised compared to the side aisles by a kind of upper aisle . A further stepping of the roof resulted from later additions on the long sides in the width of the aisles. In the walls made of field stones, bricks were walled up in places.
In front of the south facade of the Church of the Mother of God, some layers of roughly hewn bricks from an outbuilding with monk cells and the monastery school are left. In the 12./13. According to tradition, the poet Chakhrukhadze (Chakhrukhadze) received an education here in the 19th century. The hagiography Tamariani is attributed to him, a gathering in honor of Queen Tamar (r. 1184-1213) and her husband David Soslan.
Nearby there were also the ruins of a large two-story palace from the 10th century. There were utility rooms on the ground floor of the rectangular 29 × 11.5 meter building made of field stones, while the living rooms and a large hall with fireplace heating were on the upper floor. The original roof consisted of a flat wooden ceiling.
literature
- Ernst Badstübner : The Kwela Zminda Church in Gurdschani and the Mother of God Church of the Kwela Zminda Monastery in Watschnadsiani. In: Ders .: Building design and image function. Texts on the history of architecture and art. Lukas, Berlin 2006, pp. 41–57
- Wachtang Beridse, Edith Neubauer: The architecture of the Middle Ages in Georgia from the 4th to the 18th century. Anton Schroll, Vienna / Munich 1981, p. 82f
- Russudan Mepisaschwili, Wachtang Zinzadze: The Art of Ancient Georgia. Edition Leipzig, Leipzig 1977, pp. 99-101
- Edith Neubauer: Old Georgian architecture. Rock towns, churches, cave monasteries. Anton Schroll, Vienna / Munich 1976, pp. 85–89
Individual evidence
- ^ Ilma Reissner: Georgia. History - art - culture . Herder, Freiburg 1989, pp. 139, 141, 146
- ^ The Transitional Period, II-nd half of VII - 1-st half of X c. National Agency for Cultural Heritage Preservation of Georgia
- ^ The historical monuments of the village of Vachnadziani. ( Memento from April 15, 2013 in the web archive archive.today ) Gurjaani Community
- ↑ Beridse, Neubauer, p. 83
- ↑ Badstübner, p. 50
- ↑ Neubauer, pp. 85–87
- ↑ Jean Lassus in: Beat Brenk (Ed.): Propylaen Art History. Late antiquity and early Christianity. Ullstein, Frankfurt 1985, p. 229
- ↑ Badstübner, pp. 52–57
- ^ Adriano Alpago-Novello, Vahtang Beridze, Jaqueline Lafontaine-Dosogne: Art and Architecture in Medieval Georgia. Éditions de l'Institut Supérieur d'Archéologie et d'Histoire de l'Art, Lourain-La-Neuve 1980, p. 462
- ↑ Kakheti region. Architecture. ( Page no longer available , search in web archives ) Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. kakheti.gov.ge
- ↑ Mepisaschwili, Zinzadse, p. 49; Beridse, Neubauer, p. 83
