Three-conch choir
The three-conch choir (also: Dreikonchenanlage , trikonchos or clover leaf choir ) is a certain floor plan form in the medieval architecture of church buildings.
description
Unlike a floor plan of a Latin cross, in which a straight nave in Vierungsbereich by a likewise straight transept is crossed at right angles, are the three apses choir three conches , so semicircular equal apses , on the sides of a (inscribed) square so placed in relation to one another so that the floor plan has the shape of a clover leaf, which is why this solution is also known as the “clover leaf choir”. This results in a central building in the east of a larger church complex at the location of the choir , i.e. a building with its own center and equivalent side parts. A free-standing central building with four symmetrically arranged apses is a four-cone complex.
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The term "Drei-Konchen-Chor" is always associated in literature with St. Maria in the Capitol in Cologne. This church, begun around 1040 and consecrated in 1065, is a creation of the Lower Rhine architecture. Not only was an ancient motif introduced into Northern European architecture here. Here a new formulation was created that is equivalent to an invention for which there are no direct models. Above all, the specific connection between the nave and the central building of the three-conch choir was newly created - a problem that was to occupy the architecture of the Renaissance up to St. Peter's Basilica and, subsequently, that of the Baroque as well.
origin
As a basic type, the Cologne clover leaf choirs are based on late Roman memorial buildings, i.e. on grave chapels. The reason why Roman tombs of all things became exemplary for Christian architecture is as follows: Early Christianity had no fixed idea of a specific architecture that would be appropriate to its religion. Because at the beginning one expected an imminent return of Christ and the imminent end of earthly existence. And then it no longer seemed worthwhile to erect new structures. The early Christians gathered in all possible spaces, from private homes to “pagan” temples.
When the return of Christ, the so-called parousia , was delayed, however, from the end of the 2nd century people began to slowly adjust to a longer period of time on earth and people were now also thinking about suitable new buildings. And here the so-called martyr churches played a major role. A momentous development began which redefined the function of the altar, namely as a memorial to the important dead, to the martyrs of the Christian faith. It wasn't like that before. And with the new function of the altar as a memorial to the dead, the architecture of the “pagan” grave structures became the only tangible model.
In addition, since the so-called Edict of Tolerance of Milan by Emperor Constantine in 313, which subsequently (391) made Christianity the state religion, the Roman empire was no longer considered pagan and its architecture therefore appeared to be well received. This is how the central building came into being in Christian-Occidental architecture.
However, there are other theories about the origins of the three-conch choir. Based on the decisive motif, the circulation of aisles and walkways, Albert Verbeek pointed out that the Stablo Abbey , which was built around 1033/40 and demolished in 1801, already had aisles around the nave, transept and choir, even though the transept was rectangular. The second church of Brauweiler Abbey , which was built in 1048–61 and can be reconstructed from the Hohenstaufen renovation, has a floor plan based on Stablo, albeit without the continuous continuation of the side aisles at the end of the transept. The connection between Stablo, Cologne and Brauweiler is based on the following specific historical facts:
The Brauweiler Abbey was founded in 1024 by Count Palatine Ezzo and his wife Mathilde , the parents of Abbess Ida of St. Maria in the Capitol. Ida's sister Richeza , Queen of Poland, began building the new abbey church in Brauweiler in 1048. The establishment of the Benedictine monastery Brauweiler was entrusted in 1025 to the very abbot Poppo von Stablo who had built the new abbey church in Stablo.
Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem
This design was widespread in the early Middle Ages. The most important example in sacred architecture is the Justinian reconstruction of the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem at the end of the 5th century. Along with Jerusalem, Bethlehem was a much-visited place of pilgrimage and so knowledge of this church also reached the West.
The consistency of the floor plan of St. Mary in the Capitol in Cologne and Bethlehem is so convincing that a direct takeover must be seen as mandatory. The identity of the decisive basic dimensions is clearly evident. In the Middle Ages, people didn't necessarily want to be original, but rather to match other important buildings as much as possible. For centuries the Archbishops of Cologne celebrated the first mass in the city at Christmas in Maria zum Kapitol, because of the reference to the Nativity Grotto in Bethlehem and thus to the birth of Christ.
The unsuccessful 2nd crusade 1147-49, the king Konrad III. (1138–52) as far as Jerusalem will have revived the idea of the sites of the Holy Land. Arnold II von Wied had accompanied the king as Provost of Cologne Cathedral. This had his 1151 in Schwarzrheindorf in the presence of King Konrad III. consecrated double chapel built on his castle seat, which shows a floor plan similar to the trikonchos. In the same year he became Archbishop of Cologne.
In Central Europe there are obviously no corresponding structures in front of Maria im Kapitol (the trikonchos of the St. Stephen's Chapel in Essen-Werden (819–827), which was demolished in 1760, has no aisles.). The Cologne building has only really thought through the idea with the three cones and the surrounding aisles, so that here in Cologne one can only speak of a uniform composition.
The resumption of the design from Bethlehem in Cologne can also be related to the fact that in the Middle Ages there was an indulgence for the visit to the pilgrimage church in Bethlehem, which also applied in the event that one visited a church with a similar shape, so that this remission of sins also for a visit to Maria in the Capitol.
Another reason for the emergence of the three-conch choir is pointed out in art history that such choirs with circumferential side aisles were considered to be part of the increasing worship of relics, which occurred in the 11th century and which made it possible to lead the audience around the place of worship in a regulated manner . Therefore, similar designs can be found especially in pilgrimage churches.
Successor buildings
The Armenian architecture already knows three- or four- conch buildings (e.g. in Pemsaschen or Talin ), but all of them are only preserved in ruins and have been reconstructed rather imprecisely.
In Europe, the three-conch choir experienced a resurgence in the 8th century with the Chapel of the Holy Cross of the Müstair monastery in Carolingian times . The church of Germigny-des-Prés , built at the beginning of the 9th century, also echoes this architectural scheme.
Following the example of St. Maria in the Capitol in Cologne, three-corner churches in the Rhine-Maasland area experienced a new bloom in the second half of the 12th century, but now with different means of structuring, which may have been influenced by early cathedral buildings in France ( Noyon , Soissons ): The side aisles are generally no longer led around the conches in full width. The colonnades move closer to the wall. So the walkway became a narrow walkway. Galleries enriched the elevation. They became common in parish churches to accommodate more listeners.
After 1150 to 1172, Groß St. Martin first took up the floor plan in Cologne , then several churches around 1200: St. Aposteln and St. Andreas in Cologne and the Bonn Minster . From 1209, St. Quirin in Neuss and in the years 1218–24 the Münsterkirche in Roermond choose the three-cone plan as the eastern solution, which is subsequently also implemented in Gothic churches such as the Elisabeth Church in Marburg , 1235. The choir area of the church of the Rolduc Abbey near Kerkrade shows a further design option without including the transept .
In the 12th and early 13th centuries, several churches with three-church choirs were built in France (e.g. the choir of the Abbaye Saint-Pierre-ès-Liens near Tourtoirac , Dordogne).
literature
- Günter Bandmann: Medieval architecture as a bearer of meaning. Berlin [1951], 6th edition 1979, pp. 11/112.
- Günther Binding : Architectural Form Theory. Scientific Book Society, Darmstadt.
- Matthias Kitschenberg: The three icon complex of St. Maria in the Capitol of Cologne. In: Colonia Romanica 1988, p. 20.
- Nikolaus Pevsner : European architecture from the beginning to the present. 3. Edition. Munich 1973, p. 191
- Lucie Hagendorf-Nussbaum: St. Maria im Kapitol, Schnell & Steiner publishing house, 1st edition, art guide No. 2830, Regensburg, 2014. ISBN 978-3-7954-6974-0
Web links
- Dreikonchenplan Article from the RDK
Individual evidence
- ↑ Cologne has an example in its urban area. A little-visited and largely unchanged tomb from the middle of the 2nd century AD is located in Cologne-Weiden directly on Aachener Str. No. 1328. Here, a pre-form of the three-conch choir can be viewed.