Bgheno-Noravank
Bgheno-Noravank ( Armenian Բղենո-Նորավանք , "New Monastery of Bghen") is a former monastery of the Armenian Apostolic Church in the southern Armenian province of Sjunik , of which a small single-nave church , dated 1062, with side chapels in a forest area to the south from Goris was preserved. In 989 the Echmiadzin Gospels , the most important Armenian manuscript, were made here. The monastery was abandoned in the 14th century. The church ruin, overgrown by forest, was rediscovered at the beginning of the 20th century and restored until the beginning of the 1960s.
Bgheno-Noravank is not identical to the Noravank monastery in the Vajoz Dzor province .
location
Coordinates: 39 ° 23 '17.4 " N , 46 ° 21' 36.3" E
South of Goris happened by Sissian coming expressway M2 after four kilometers, the village Karahundsch extends further in the valley of Goris River and crossed beyond a hill in a ravine 730 meters to Worotan the same village and a hydroelectric plant. Now the road ascends in many serpentines parallel to the border of the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic and leads over a pass around 1700 meters high to the provincial capital Kapan . Shortly before the top of the pass and before the village of Schurnuch, a side road branches off to the village of Bardsrawan (Bardzravan) to the west. The ruins of the monastery are located in a small, flat clearing in a dense forest area 3.5 kilometers from the junction and 100 meters north of the road. Bardsrawan is four kilometers northwest of the monastery. The village of Tandsawer a few kilometers southwest on the side road H45 leading from Tatew Monastery to Kapan cannot be reached directly from the monastery.
history
Bghen is the name of a historical canton in the province of Sjunik, which in the Middle Ages belonged to the ecclesiastical administrative area of the Bishop of Tatev. In the area were bronze and iron age grave stones found. It is possible that an early Christian church first stood on the site of the monastery founded in the 10th century. According to the historian Stephanos Orbelian (around 1250–1305), the first buildings built in 935–936 under the priest Stephanos were a church with a gawit in front of it , accommodation for lepers and a portico made of light limestone .
From 1050 the church was rebuilt, this time using blue-gray basalt . Three inscriptions mention Bishop Hovhannes V (Johannes) von Sjunik, who died in 1058, as the builder. That year the main room of the church was completed. After his death, the monk Grigor continued his work on behalf of King Grigor of Sjunik. This is evident from another inscription in which the completion of the entire church is recorded in 1062.
In the 10th century, after the monasteries Tatew and Tsaghats Kar, Bghen-Norawank was one of the more important educational institutions in which humanistic education, literacy, miniature painting and sculpture were taught. At the end of the 13th century Gladzor (in the Tanahat monastery ) became the leading university in Armenia, and around 1340 Tatev succeeded it for a century. From the numerous evangelists and other ecclesiastical and secular texts that were copied in the monastery, almost nothing remained after the attacks by the Seljuks from the middle of the 11th century, Mongols in the first half of the 13th century and Timurids from the end of the 14th century . One of the few surviving manuscripts is the Etchmiadzin Gospels from 989, which are now kept in Matenadaran in Yerevan. In the appendix it has four miniatures from the end of the 6th or beginning of the 7th century and an ivory binding in relief of Byzantine origin from the 6th century.
Around the middle of the 14th century the monks gave up the monastery and gradually the ruins were overgrown by forest. In the 1920s, the writer Axel Bakunts , who explored the area as an agronomist, accidentally discovered the ruins in the middle of the forest. The preserved church was uncovered in 1950 and restored between 1961 and 1962.
Monastery complex
To the north of the restored church, some of the foundations of outbuildings from different times have been preserved. The church could have been a palace chapel and belonged to the summer residence of the Archbishop of Sjunik, who resided in Tatev. The metropolitans of Syunik strove to maintain a certain independence from the Catholicos in Etschmiadzin , which is far to the north , which could have been expressed, among other things, in an effort to create an original architecture that is typical for the region.
At its core, the building consists of a barrel-vaulted rectangular room with a semicircular apse to the east. The longitudinal walls in the north and south open with two arched passages each to the chapels with barrel vaults, which are attached to the sides between 1058 and 1062 and also have semicircular apses. A portal vestibule is built in front of this ensemble along almost the entire west side. Its three vaults are oriented as a continuation of the ones above the church rooms. The porch, from which three entrances lead to the church rooms, has in addition to the mighty main portal a small rectangular entrance in the north wall and one in the south wall. The entire composition is unique in the Armenian sacred architecture and on the outside resembles a greatly shortened three-aisled basilica , the three aisles of which are covered by a shared gable roof. Another special feature are five semicircular bulges that are sunk into the rear wall of the apse next to each other. In the straight east wall, two vertical triangular niches mark the division of space between the altar apse and the side chapels. The northern chapel is extended by two rectangular chambers on the north wall, which protrude beyond the outer wall. Apart from the open entrances, the only source of light is a relatively large window in the central apse.
The portal porch engages with its location on the west side of the incurred towards the end of the 10th century Gawite , which initially in Gndevank (dated 999) rectangular hall with a barrel vault were. The three-dimensional design of the otherwise simple outer structure is concentrated on the western facade of the porch. The portal, surmounted by double round arches, is joined by lower and narrower niches with double blind arches. The two stepped arches of the portal widen towards the top, which is also characteristic of the interior design of Armenian churches of this time. The round arches are supported by half-columns with cube-shaped combatant capitals in relief. The capitals are made up of abacus plates with spheres of about the same size underneath. The ornament on the plates made of lobed pairs of leaves hanging down can be found in the corresponding places on the Church of the Redeemer by Ani (dated 1036) and on the Church of Our Lady ( Surb Astvatsatsin ) by Bjni (dated 1031).
The wall segment above the capitals seems to protrude not only over the side niches, but over the entire lower facade and forms an optical high focal point of the building, as also occurs in the Cathedral of Ani (1001 completed). The sculptural design of the interior is also related to Ani's architecture school . The reveals of the passages in the long walls are richly decorated like the capitals.
In addition to the geometric and floral design elements, some relief panels with figurative motifs were built into the walls. These are probably panels that were originally attached in large numbers to the side walls of the single-nave church before it was extended by side chapels. They could have formed a row of figures, as on the Holy Cross Church of Akdamar, built in 915–921 . Stylistically, however, the figures are clearly different. The folds on the long robes appear simplified and fall straight down. The facial features are reduced to the essential features, they appear rigid and withdrawn. This makes them similar to the early Christian miniatures in the Etchmiadzin Gospels. In contrast, in a relief showing the women at the tomb of Jesus, the faces are a little softer and the folds of the robes are more elegant.
literature
- Patrick Donabédian: Documentation of the art places. In: Jean-Michel Thierry: Armenian Art. Herder, Freiburg / B. 1988, pp. 522f, ISBN 3-451-21141-6
Web links
- Rick Ney: Siunik . (PDF; 1.6 MB) TourArmenia, 2009, p. 31
- Bgheno-Noravank Monastery. Armeniapedia
- Historic Monuments of Syunik Region. Bgheno Noravank. ( Memento of November 26, 2003 in the Internet Archive ) archive.is/hixld