Chandsta
Chandsta ( Georgian ხანძთა , χɑnd͡ztʰɑ ) Turkish Porta , is the ruin of a medieval monastery of the Georgian Kingdom of Tao-Klardschetien in today's northeastern Turkish province of Artvin . It was founded at the end of the 8th century, along with other Georgian Orthodox monasteries, by the monk Grigol Chandsteli (759–861). At the beginning of the 9th century a first stone church was built, which a century later gave way to the cross- domed church completed around 940 and preserved in ruins . A bell tower from the 13th / 14th centuries also belongs to the former monastery complex near the village of Pirnallı , high in the mountains . Century.
location
Coordinates: 41 ° 14 ′ 16.1 " N , 42 ° 4 ′ 26.8" E
Expressway 10 runs upstream between Artvin in the west and Ardahan in the east in a gorge that becomes increasingly narrow and steeper up to Şavşat along the Berta Suyu (Georgian Imerchewi ), a tributary of the Çoruh. The ruins of the churches of four Georgian monasteries have been preserved along this route on the right (northern) bank of the river. They are located at the foothills of the Imerchewi Mountains (Turkish Imerhevi Deresi ), which represent the southern drop of the Karçal Mountains ( Karçal Dağları ) up to 3415 meters high . The first road leads nine kilometers after the junction of the expressway towards Erzurum to the Dolisqana monastery church in the village of Hamamlıköy. Another narrow dirt road branches off about 20 kilometers to the east, which initially runs parallel over the expressway on the slope and only gradually increases in height. After five kilometers a fork in the road is reached, from which it is now two kilometers in serpentines uphill to Opiza. The path goes straight ahead from this fork, initially at about the same height on the rocky slope above the valley floor, seven kilometers further to Chandsta. The route is dug into the steep, barren rocky slope, with a view of the Berta Suyu deep down in the valley. In two or three small side valleys with brooks, one homestead practices agriculture on tiny terraces that are wrested from the slope by high stone walls. Otherwise this section of the valley is unpopulated. After a junction, the road leaves the main valley and climbs steeply for the last kilometer. A footpath ends at this junction, which requires surefootedness and creates an almost vertical connection to the road in the valley. The ruins of the monastery and the scattered houses of the village can only be reached via footpaths from a stream bed.
The Tbeti Cathedral just before Şavşat ends the series of monastery churches in this valley. About 30 kilometers south of Berta Suyu, in the side valley of Ardanuç Çay (Georgian Artanudschistskali ), the ruins of Yeni Rabat , the alleged location of the former Schatberdi monastery, have been preserved near the small town of Ardanuç .
history
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When the Arab Umayyads withdrew from the Iberian settlement area after the middle of the 8th century, the region was practically depopulated and economically collapsed. The Umayyad governor of Azerbaijan and Armenia Marwan II (688–750) plundered through 736–738 with punitive expeditions; there was also a long-running cholera epidemic. The side valleys in the north of Tao-Klardschetien, which were difficult to access, were suitable places of retreat for the monks to found monasteries. Only a few settlers lived in the forest areas. In the 9th and 10th centuries, the monks in Tao-Klardschetien built numerous churches and monasteries. At the end of the 10th century, King Bagrat III. from the dynasty of the Bagratids Tao-Klardschetien with three other principalities to the Kingdom of Georgia .
Opiza was the oldest monastery in Tao-Klardschetien; it was founded in the middle of the 8th century. The monk Giorgi Mertschule wrote the hagiography "The Life of Grigol Chandsteli" about Grigol Chandsteli, who was born in Kartlien and came to Tao-Klardschetien around 782 as a priest in the scriptorium (writing room) of Chandsta in 951 . This work describes in detail the origins of the monastery and the construction of the church. Grigol is said to have lived initially in Opiza and from here, at the suggestion of King Aschot I (r. 813-830), founded three monasteries and two nunneries in the 830s and 840s. Aschot stayed in the 820s in the fortress Ardanuç (Georgian Artanudschi), which he made the center of his newly formed empire. He ensured stable political conditions and a gradual economic boom, which favored the founding of the monastery.
This can also be found in another publication entitled “The Life of Serapion of Sarsma ” about the monk Serapion , who died around 900 . Medieval scribes referred to the miraculous power of John the Baptist, which Grigol is said to have inspired in his work. After Giorgi Mertschule, Grigol looked for a suitable place to found a monastery in the vicinity of Opiza for two years, until he finally found it at the home of a hermit. The reporting monk praised the land blessed by God, the nearby spring, the remote location and the viticulture of the monastery brothers. Initially, the monks had to make all the tools and what they needed to live by themselves. First a wooden church and some monk cells were built, later a refectory (dining room) was added. Probably at the beginning of the 9th century, with financial support from the local feudal lord Gabriel Dapantschuli, the wooden church was replaced by a stone church. The first churches in the region were single-aisle hall churches or three-aisled basilicas . The church in Chandsta was decorated with icons from Constantinople and a typikon (a collection of monastic rules) that was brought from the Mar Saba monastery near Jerusalem. Grigol had meanwhile been appointed Archimandrite , the head of all local monasteries, and founded another monastery in Schatberdi ( Yeni Rabat ) and two nunneries with Gunatle and Mere. Other monasteries such as İşhan and Bana can be traced back to Grigol's students in the following decades. It is thanks to all of them that the valley of Berta Suyu became the center of the "Georgian Sinai ".
In the Chandsta school the monks received religious training, in the scriptorium educated monks wrote their own texts or copied the religious literature. Grigol himself is said to have mastered several languages, including Greek and Aramaic . After Mertschule, Grigol wrote a menaeon (liturgical monthly book) and several hymns . Among the other scholars who worked in Chandsta was Arsen Sapareli (830–887), who later became Bishop of Kartlien . He wrote a treatise on the religious division between Georgia and Armenia and on the martyrdom of Abibos of Nekressi . The Chandsta trained monk Makari Leteteli settled as a calligrapher in Mar Saba near Jerusalem, where he published the Chrestomathie (text collection for teaching purposes ) Mravaltavi in 864 . The monastery in Palestine was an important center for Georgian literature.
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By the end of the 9th century, the church in Chandsta was no longer sufficient and the abbot of the monastery, Arsen, ordered a new church to be built for the larger monastic community. Its construction began under Prince Aschot Kuchi (r. 896-918), the Eristawi ("Grand Duke") of Tao-Klardschetien and son of the Kuropalat Gurgen I († 891). Mertschule calls him a generous sponsor of Chandsta. According to the report, the construction work turned out to be very strenuous, because a level platform had to be created on the steep slope and stones and mortar had to be carried from afar on slippery and steep paths. As a result, the work dragged on and the church was only completed under the Eristawi Gurgen II (r. 918-941). Giorgi Mertschule may have reported about the building from his own experience. In “The Life of Grigol Chandsteli” he also gives a historical outline of the kingship in Tao-Klardschetien and describes the social conditions; he was also one of the leading hymn poets. Among the later scholars from Chandsta is Mose Chandsteli, who worked in the 11th century and, among other things, copied the biblical books of prophets for the monastery in Schatberdi in 1083. In the 12./13. In the 19th century, a certain monk Giorgi paid ransom money to infidels to get back a collection of hymns for the monastery, and a monk named Stephan copied the Menaeon for the month of December.
Neither remains of the first stone church have survived, nor is its location known. The oldest identifiable building was a chapel with the external dimensions 5.8 × 4.4 meters, which stood on a reasonably flat surface south below the church at a source that protruded from the east wall. It seems to come from the early days of monastic life. Its walls were made of roughly hewn blocks; What is unusual for such a small building is that they were three feet thick. The only economical use of mortar and the renouncement of all forms of jewelry is an indication of the lack of material and the limited technical possibilities of the first monks. The building is similar to the Aschots private chapel built in the 820s in the Artanuji fortress.
A comparison with the monastery churches of Dolisqana and Opiza shows that construction of the second stone church in Chandsta could not have started until the end of the reign of Asot Kuchi at the earliest. The entire construction period probably fell between the years 918 and 941, when his successor Gurgen ruled. At that time, the outbuildings of the monastery such as the refectory and the monks' cells as well as the surrounding wall should already have existed. Giorgi Mertschule only speaks of the “new and beautiful church” without ever mentioning the other buildings.
After an inscription stone that was used a second time in a house wall, the Bagratide donated David III. (Kuropalat, ruled 966–1001) a stoa , which perhaps meant a porch. The well-preserved, free-standing bell tower is likely to date from the 13th century at the earliest, as there are no bell towers known from older times in Georgian architecture.
In the middle of the 16th century, the region fell to the Ottoman Empire , which meant the end of Georgian monastic life. In August 1894 the linguist Nikolai Jakowlewitsch Marr came to Porta and was immediately convinced that he had found the Schatberdi Monastery. The Georgian historian Pavle Ingorokva (1893–1990) drew attention to the mix-up in his biography of Giorgi Mertschule (Tbilisi, 1954) on the basis of source studies and without having been there himself. Since the early 1960s, Nicole and Jean-Michel Thierry were the first art historians to conduct research trips to northeastern Turkey, which had been difficult to access after the Second World War. Wachtang Djobadze published a monograph in 1992 on his studies of the Georgian churches in eastern Turkey. He was in Chandsta for the first time in 1967.
The identification of the place Porta with the Chandsta monastery is mainly based on the work "The Life of Grigol Chandsteli". According to this, Chandsta was the closest monastery to Opiza, and Schatberdi was at a greater distance than the other monasteries in the vicinity (the Berta Suyu valley). Giorgi Mertschule describes a trip that King Bagrat I (r. 937-945) made with his two brothers, Grigol Chandsteli and some monks to the monasteries. From their starting point Artanudschi, the capital of the kingdom, the group first visited Shatberdi (Yeni Rabat), then Berta, until they finally came in an arc from west to east through Opiza, Chandsta to Beretelta. Hence they must have come through the valley at Porta. Around Chandsta there was not enough land for the monks to support themselves, which is why King Aschot awarded them fertile land at Schatberdi so that Grigol Chandsteli could found a new monastery there. In fact, Porta lies in a narrow valley cut with no arable land and Yeni Rabat is surrounded by fertile fields. Another clear indication of localization comes from the colophon of a Georgian manuscript that is now kept in St. Catherine's Monastery on Sinai. It mentions a Grigol as the builder of Chandsta and a Markos as the builder of the bell tower there. Chandsta was the only monastery of Tao-Klardschetiens to have a bell tower, on which the name Markos is also mentioned in an inscription.
architecture
The monastery was located within a wall that was about 38 × 51 meters in size and stretched in a north-south direction. The east wall was essentially formed by the row of large monastery buildings, starting with the 10th century church in the north, followed by older side rooms, a chapel and the refectory in the southeast corner. Part of the hill had to be removed to build the church. High retaining walls were required for the monastery buildings, which were not completely backfilled with earth. Instead, barrel-vaulted cavities were built in in several places , which served as a wine cellar and at the same time reduced the pressure of the filled earth on the retaining walls. There are hardly any remains of the outbuildings, as farmers in the area used the stone to create foundations for their modest wooden houses. According to Marr's description, there were still the ruins of some classrooms and other monastery buildings on three tiered terraces in 1904. The bell tower is isolated about 15 meters from the south-west corner of the church. It survived until recently as a warehouse for hay and is now empty. Marr found a 2.6 × 1.1 meter large wine press nearby, which has now disappeared. The preserved retaining wall on the east side consists of roughly hewn and almost rectangular stone blocks that rise to heights of six to eight meters. On half of the 51-meter-long wall, a 4-meter-wide and 2.2-meter-thick buttress helps stabilize it. Some of the stones come from the stream bed a little below.
Monk cells
On the south side of the church was a three-story building with three narrow cells on the two upper floors. Its footprint measured 5.8 × 2.5 meters and was 2.6 meters high. Each monk cell had a door 1.05 meters wide on the narrow west side and a window slot opposite. There was a corridor between the church and the first cell, from which a tunnel led to a room below the southern side room of the apse ( pastophorium ). Built into the thick walls south of the third cell was a 6.2 × 9 meter chapel outside. The inside clearance was 2.85 × 4.5 meters for the prayer room, which was adjoined in the east by a 1.5 meter deep semicircular apse with a floor level one step higher. Typical fittings for such apses are a central window opening and side wall niches. In 1967 small remains of painting were still visible in the apse. The monks' cells and the chapel were connected to each other by a 1.6 meter wide balcony facing the central courtyard along the west side. Rooms of unknown size and function were in the basement. On the opposite side of the courtyard there may have been more accommodations for the monks. Giorgi Mertschule describes the life of the monks as hard and according to strict rules. There were no fireplaces in the cells, nor did the monks light candles at night. The only equipment was a simple bed for the night and a vessel with water.
refectory
The largest building contained the dining room in the southeast corner of the monastery, adjacent to the chapel. Two doors in the north wall (1.7 and 1.0 meters wide) led into a 17.5 × 12 meter hall, which was covered by two barrel vaults. Four belt arches , which stretched between the middle row of pillars and pilasters on the walls, divided the ceiling. The thickness of the outer walls varied between 0.9 and 1.3 meters. The wall shells consisted of roughly rectangular blocks that were walled up in horizontal layers. The filling space in the middle of the wall was exceptionally narrow and measured less than a third of the width of the wall. As Mertschule mentioned, there was not enough mortar to consolidate the rubble that was poured in, which is why the stones were sometimes not sufficiently connected to one another. Three wide windows in the east wall and three narrower arched windows in the south wall illuminated the room. In the south-west corner, an opening in the floor led to a room below that could have served as a wine cellar.
The use of coarse and large stone blocks from the creek bed, the unplastered walls and other processing techniques suggest an early construction period, possibly during the lifetime of Grigol Chandsteli. According to Mertschule, the founder of the monastery first built a wooden church, then a cell for himself and his colleagues and finally a large refectory. The size of the building corresponds roughly to the refectories of Opiza and Otchta Eklesia ( Dörtkilise ), only the dining room of Oschki ( Öşk Vank ) was even larger at 31.8 × 16.4 meters and thus probably the number of monks there.
Monastery church
The church, which dominates all buildings and the surrounding area, stands on a terrace up to six meters high on the slope above the other buildings. The floor level was approximately at the height of the vault of the refectory. The structure of the church followed the principle of central buildings that emerged in Georgia in the middle of the 6th century . Its floor plan in the form of a Greek cross formed the basis of the Georgian church building, which was often lengthened to the west by combining it with the older basilical building type. In the church of Chandsta, the cruciform central room, the domed ceiling of which is raised by a windowed drum , lies within a rectangular plan on the outside. The total length inside including a presbytery and the semicircular apse opening behind it is 16.85 meters. On both sides of the apse, 4.5 × 2.4 meter large rectangular side rooms ( pastophoria ) bordered , which were only connected by doors to the transepts , but not to the apse.
The west arm with its 4.6 meter wide central nave and aisles in the alignment of the pastophoria of only two meters wide corresponds to the prayer room of a three-aisled basilica. In this transitional form, the dimensions of a contemporary cross-domed church were combined with the usual width ratio of the three basilica naves of 2.3: 1. The only accesses were a round arched door in the north and south walls in the area of the west arm. Their narrow width of only 1.2 meters can be explained by an increased need for security.
The dome is elevated by a tambour that is octagonal on the inside and twelve-sided on the outside, which rests on a square base structure with four somewhat tapering round arches in the center. Their supports are the two wall corners of the choir in the east and two free-standing pillars in the west. As in Yeni Rabat and Opiza, the transition from the rectangle to the domed circle takes place via pendentives with an attached semicircle of trumpets (false trumpets ). The twelve wall surfaces are structured by double columns that are connected to one another by blind arches. The columns end in stylized Doric capitals, which are composed of an abacus and an echinus with half discs underneath. As in Opiza, the roof cone was designed in the unusual and elegant shape of a folded roof . The zigzag line of the eaves created small gables over each of the twelve wall surfaces. Carefully hewn, fine-grain sandstone was used to build the dome; the processing was done much more carefully than in any other area of the church. Mertschule accordingly praised the architect of the church, Amona, as a “master builder with great wisdom”.
Traces of pigment on the double columns show that they were once painted purple. Polychrome designed outer walls - through applied pigments or through different types of stone - are typical for church buildings from the first half of the 10th century in Tao-Klardschetien. Amona was probably the first master builder in Tao-Klardschetien, who gave the architectural design a special expressiveness through painterly elements. The first relief cross on the east gable of a Georgian church appears at the three- church basilica of Gurdschaani . In Chandsta this cross took on a monumental size for the first time. Subsequently, the relief cross became a characteristic element of Georgian church facades; since 10./11. In the 17th century it no longer appears directly above the apse window, but high up on the east wall.
Bell tower
The two-story bell tower in the southwest of the church is the best preserved building in the monastery. The basement forms a square with a side length of 4.5 meters from the outside, with an entrance on the west side. Roughly hewn, roughly rectangular blocks of very different sizes were used for its construction. The actual tower above has 16 wall surfaces over a circular base. Every second wall is broken through by a 1.95 meter high and 0.58 meter wide arched opening. 16 surfaces made of smooth stone slabs, which are optically separated from one another by ribs, form a pyramid roof . The eaves edge is slightly zigzag-shaped and therefore hardly recognizes the shape of the drum dome.
The quality of the construction corresponds to that on the tambour. Two inscriptions in the old Georgian alphabet Mrglowani with angular letters and colons between the words have been preserved on the outer wall of the bell tower. They were installed during the construction period and lead to the conclusion that the bell tower must be dated much later than the church. The first six-line inscription is on the northeast side. She names an Abesalma and his assistants Kamir and Kazan as the builder. On the second, three-line inscription on the west side, the name Markos can be read, although his function is not specified. Abesalma was probably the leading stonemason at the bell tower and Markos probably also had a leading role in the supervision of the construction.
literature
- Wachtang Djobadze: A Brief Survey of the Monastery of St George in Hanzta. In: Oriens Christianus, B. 78, 1994
- Wachtang Djobadze: Early Medieval Georgian Monasteries in Historic Tao, Klardjetʿi and Šavšetʿi. (Research on art history and Christian archeology, XVII) Franz Steiner, Stuttgart 1992, pp. 24–39
- Volker Eid : East Turkey. Peoples and cultures between Taurus and Ararat . DuMont, Cologne 1990, p. 201, ISBN 3-7701-1455-8
- Thomas Alexander Sinclair: Eastern Turkey: An Architectural and Archaeological Survey. Vol. II. The Pindar Press, London 1989, p. 22
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Maka Elbakidze: The Subject of Holiness in Georgian Hagiographic Texts. Shota Rustaveli Institute of Georgian Literature. In: Societal Studies 4 (3), Tiflis 2012, pp. 923–935, here p. 925
- ^ The Exhibition: "Georgian Calligraphers" . ( 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. manuscript.ge
- ↑ Djobadze 1992, pp. 35f
- ^ Sinclair, p. 22: bell tower late 12th or early 13th century; Djobadze 1992, p. 35: not before the 14th century
- ↑ Djobadze 1992, pp. 36f, 39
- ↑ Djobadze 1992, p. 29f
- ^ Edith Neubauer: Old Georgian architecture. Rock towns. Churches. Cave monasteries. Anton Schroll, Vienna / Munich 1976, p. 32f
- ↑ Oath, p. 200
- ↑ Djobadze 1992, pp. 30-33
- ↑ Djobadze 1992, pp. 34f, 37-39
