Three Church Basilica
The three-church basilica ( Georgian სამეკლესიანი ბაზილიკა , samek'lesiani basilik'a ) is a special design of a three-aisled basilica , in which the three adjacent vessels separated by floor to ceiling walls and each other are only accessible by doors. On the east side, the narrow aisles end at small altar apses. They are often connected by a walkway along the west wall. This spatial arrangement, presumably introduced for liturgical reasons, emerged in Georgia in the middle of the 6th century and was particularly widespread in the eastern Georgian region of Kakheti until the beginning of the 11th century .
Origin and function
Three-church basilicas are characteristic of monastery churches in medieval Georgia , they do not occur outside the country, not even in the Armenian church architecture, which is related in many aspects . The earliest known church buildings in Georgia, which did not yet have any special features, were built in the 4th century. According to the inscription 478–493, the Sioni Church of Bolnissi , a three-aisled basilica with barrel vaults, was important for later development . It was followed by the classical phase of Georgian church architecture in the 5th and 6th centuries. It was significantly influenced by influences from Syria . Possibly this was related to the faith tradition of the "Thirteen Syrian Fathers", Georgian monks who left the monastery of Symeon Stylites the Younger or their monastery in Jerusalem and returned to Georgia at the end of the 6th century . At this time, the economic decline of the Christian settlements in the Dead Cities forced their inhabitants to gradually emigrate. The tradition of the Georgian Orthodox Church is closely related to monasticism .
In parallel to the early hall churches and basilicas, completely different forms of construction such as round churches and four- cone buildings emerged up to the 6th century (for example Schiomghwime , named after Schio, one of the "Thirteen Syrian Fathers"). In the 6th century domed central buildings gradually began to develop into the dominant form of architecture, at the Church of the Redeemer of Zromi from the beginning of the 7th century a dome is supported by four free-standing pillars for the first time. In combination with the basilica plan, a tambour with a dome over the central crossing resulted in elevated structures, which were extended to the west by a nave. In the 7th century the three-church basilicas achieved a clear shape. Its time focus was in the 9th and 10th centuries and its time ended in the first half of the 11th century.
Although the Muslim Arabs invaded Georgia in the middle of the 7th century and established the Emirate of Tbilisi a century later , their influence had little effect on the Christian culture of the population, which, apart from economic restrictions, was able to develop relatively undisturbed. Nor was the worship of icons interrupted by the Byzantine iconoclasm of the 8th and 9th centuries.
The reasons for building three-church basilicas are largely unknown. Since they occur almost exclusively in monastery churches, a connection with the liturgy of the monks is assumed. Perhaps separate devotions were required at the same time, with the side chancel only being used by a few believers during rituals. The western approach speaks in favor of a prayer path and a processional service, in which the participants stopped at several locations. Ernst Badstübner draws a comparison with the passage crypts in Western Europe, for example in the Einhard basilica from the 9th century, where a grave or relics were venerated.
Development of the design
In a three-aisled basilica, the roof structure of the nave rests on the longitudinal walls and two rows of arcades . In their place of the three-church basilica there are closed partition walls, so that usually narrow side rooms are created next to the wide central nave, which in many cases are connected by a corridor along the west wall and have their own small apses in the east . The central dome is thus framed on three sides. A door in each partition allows direct passage. The lower side rooms stand out on the outside through staggered roofs.
An example of one of the oldest three-church basilicas from the 6th century is in the village of Kwemo Bolnissi (6 kilometers from Bolnissi ). With this basic shape, a semicircular apse protrudes from the roughly square building in the east. The middle barrel vault is almost twice as high as the two on the side. As is customary in early Syrian churches, access is only from the south into a narrow hallway-like room, from which two doors lead into the central nave and from there one into the northern side room. The symmetry of the building has not only a cultic, but also a static meaning in order to absorb the shear forces of the central barrel vault.
Parallel barrel rooms are not a Georgian innovation, comparable or exemplary buildings can be found in the Syrian-Mesopotamian area. In Seleukia-Ctesiphon , a church built around 600 with a barrel-vaulted main room was excavated, on the east side of which there were three unconnected rooms with barrel vaults within the rectangular floor plan.
The cemetery church of the sub-Nubian place ar-Ramal consisted in its first construction phase at the end of the 6th or 7th century from three adjacent rooms, which were separated by almost closed walls at the place of the usual rows of pillars. Later, the building made of field stones and adobe bricks was widened by another apse room and expanded into a double church with two central aisles. The double church in Tamit , which is dated to the 11th century, was similarly divided by a partition . The need for several altars is justified in Nubia with the regulation of Gregory of Nyssas in the 4th century, according to which the liturgy should not be performed more than once a day on the same altar.
The three-church basilica of the former Nekressi monastery in Kakheti from the 7th century embodies a more classic room layout than Kwemo Bolnissi. The two side aisles, connected by a western corridor, run to just over half the total length of the building and their apses end in front of relatively large, rectangular adjoining rooms ( pastophoria ). In the monastery church of Segani (Zegani), which is almost identical in the basic plan and was built around 600, the western gallery has an upper floor, which opens up to the central nave with wide arcades.
In contrast, the tube-like side rooms of the basilica of Dsweli Shuamta extend over the entire length. The basilica from the 7th century is directly connected on the north side with a central building designed as a four- cone complex , which the visitor reaches after crossing the basilica.
Further three-church basilicas from the 6./7. Century are Dmanissi , Sabue, Saguramo, Tscheremi, Wanati and from the 8th century Ambara. The church of Eredwi, a village in South Ossetia , dated 906 , has, besides the usual one in the west, another one, unique in Georgia, behind the altar apse in the east.
A later three-church basilica with a high drum dome and a complicated floor plan is the Church of the Mother of God in the All Saints Monastery of Watschnadsiani from the 9th century. Apart from a greatly shortened north aisle, the ground floor corresponds to the usual pattern of the region, while the gallery above both aisles and above the walkway in the west has arched windows to the central nave. Connections to the urban Byzantine architecture that radiated from the Hagia Sophia can be established here . The All Saints Church of Gurjaani from the 8th century did not belong to a monastery, but was designed as a ruling church. The upper floor of the two-story building with the basic plan of a three-church basilica has double arcades behind which the prince, separated from the people on the ground floor, took part in the service.
A connection to the presbytery of the Burgundian abbey church Abbey of Cluny can be established from the rural east Georgian three-church basilica in the sense of a functional takeover for the monastic rite . Their first church building (Cluny A) when the monastery was founded in 910 was reconstructed as a rectangular central hall with side corridors separated by partition walls. The three-aisled presbytery was built above this three-aisled church during the expansion to Cluny II in 981. Cluny II was in turn the starting point for a series of three-aisled choirs in medieval Western Europe.
literature
- Ernst Badstübner : Considerations on the origin of the three-aisled presbytery in monastery churches of the Benedictine reform monasticism. A comparison with the three-church basilicas in Georgia. In: Ders .: Building design and image function. Texts on the history of architecture and art. Lukas, Berlin 2006, pp. 58-68
- Edith Neubauer: Old Georgian architecture. Rock towns, churches, cave monasteries. Anton Schroll, Vienna / Munich 1976
- Russudan Mepisaschwili, Wachtang Zinzadze: The Art of Ancient Georgia. Edition Leipzig, Leipzig 1977
Individual evidence
- ↑ Jean Lassus in: Beat Brenk (Ed.): Propylaen Art History. Late antiquity and early Christianity . Ullstein, Frankfurt 1985, p. 205
- ^ Neubauer, p. 79
- ↑ Russudan Mepisaschwili, Rolf Schrade: Georgia. Churches and fortifications. Wiley-VHC, Weinheim 1986, p. 370, ISBN 978-3527175758
- ↑ Badstübner, p. 63
- ↑ Mepisaschwili, Zinzadze, p. 61
- ↑ Badstübner, p. 65
- ^ Peter Grossmann : Christian architecture in Egypt. ( Handbook of Oriental Studies . Section One: The Near and Middle East . Volume 62) Brill, Leiden 2002, p. 95
- ^ Neubauer, p. 28
- ^ Neubauer, p. 66f; Badstübner, p. 62
- ↑ Mepisaschwili, Zinzadse, pp. 61, 108f
- ↑ Badstübner, pp. 59–61