Orthodox church buildings

Orthodox church buildings sometimes differ externally, but above all in the design and furnishings of the interior of Roman Catholic and Protestant church buildings. Church buildings of Catholic Union communities largely follow the pattern of the Orthodox, as they maintain Orthodox rites despite being under the Pope .

Designs

Externally, the numerous domes , which symbolize the sky as in western church buildings, are striking.

Cathedral of Christ the Savior in Moscow, 19th century
Sveti Jovan Kaneo in Ohrid ( Macedonia ), 13th century
St. Anton Church in Bucharest , Romania
Orthodox or uniate village church in Kwiatoń ( Poland )
Pantánassa Monastery ( Mistra , GR ) 15th century

Examples of Orthodox church buildings of different styles of building history and regional building traditions:

Rustic village chapel in Cyprus
Church on Mykonos as an example of Cycladic architecture
Russian tradition and italy. Renaissance: Dormition Cathedral (Moscow)
Orthodox baroque church in Corfu
Planned with 5 domes: Classicist St. Isaac's Cathedral in St. Petersburg

basic forms

In Greece, the Slavic countries of Southeast Europe and Russia, the cross-domed church is the standard scheme. A large part of the Orthodox church buildings is not much longer than wide, because it was preferred to approximate the floor plan of the higher parts of the building to a Greek cross ( cruciform church in the narrower sense). In Russia, Ukraine, Belarus and regions of Poland with a predominance of Ruthenia , orthodox and uniate church buildings often consist of a series of several components, each with an approximately square floor plan. The design of the basilica occurs in Orthodoxy only as a cross basilica with mostly very short cross arms.

Country-specific features

The development of Orthodox church building over time is characterized by a stronger bond with late Roman architecture and the less frequent use of architectural fashions than, for example, with the western church ( Catholic and Protestant ). The Hagia Sophia of Constantinople, now Istanbul, and its loss to Orthodoxy are not insignificant for this development . As with other denominations, however, there are also outstanding examples of all architectural epochs in Orthodoxy.

There are also regional differences, favored by the fact that a large part of the Eastern Church communities are autocephalous , on the other hand by regional building materials or the coexistence with other religious communities.

In Greece, today's Turkey and in the Balkans , the church domes are usually single-shell, which makes them appear squat on the outside. In Russian countries, on the other hand, onion roofs are preferably built over the domes. The stylistic peculiarity of Moscow's St. Basil's Cathedral and some similarly designed smaller churches from the same period is interpreted to mean that the architecture of the mosque was the inspiration for the recently conquered and destroyed Tatar capital Kazan .

Baroque elements ( Ukrainian Baroque ) were included more frequently in the architecture of the Eastern Churches in Poland-Lithuania . Fresco painting of the outer walls and the roofs protruding far to protect them are a specialty of the Romanian church ( Moldavian monasteries in the area of the former Principality of Moldova and the wooden churches in Maramureș ).

Monasteries

A large proportion of the art-historically significant Orthodox churches are monastery churches. Examples:

Putna Monastery (Romania)
Osios Loukas (Greece)
Studenica (Serbia), whose Church of Our Lady has an exceptionally elongated floor plan.
Horezu Monastery (Romania)
Rila Monastery (Bulgaria), generously expanded in the 19th century
Sveti Naum (Macedonia), 9th century
Kiev Pechersk Lavra (Ukraine), example of the Ukrainian Baroque
Trinity Monastery of Sergiev Posad (Russia), better known under the Soviet name of Sagorsk

In Orthodox monasteries there is often more than just one church; on the other hand, they almost never have a cloister .

Historical conditions

As is common with any religious building, the size of Eastern Church buildings is not least influenced by whether the respective church community was closely linked to the state or was only tolerated under Islamic or Catholic rule. In Greece and the Balkan countries, for example, after their separation from the Ottoman Empire, churches were built in many places that are larger than the medieval ones preserved there, such as the Alexander Nevsky Cathedral in Sofia .

The exterior of religiously redesignated places of worship, for example in places in Belarus and Ukraine that used to belong to Poland-Lithuania or in the Kaliningrad Oblast , reflects the denomination of the original builders, as everywhere.

Furnishing

Iconostasis of the Uglich Cathedral ( Russia )

Interior of St. Vladimir Church, Kiev

The interior of Orthodox church buildings is designed according to the requirements of the Eastern Church rite, in Europe mostly the Byzantine rite :

The sanctuary (Holy of Holies) is visually separated from the community room by a partition wall covered with pictures, the iconostasis . This separation can be understood as a recourse to pre-Christian Greek tradition; the most important part of ancient Greek and Roman temples was the cella , to which only priests had access. In the Middle Ages, there was also a separation in many Western churches, which, however, usually did not completely obstruct the view, the rood screen . For orthodox theology, the hiding of the holy of holies behind the iconostasis means that God is inaccessible without the mediation of Christ. According to this teaching, the image content of the iconostasis mediates between the community and the holy of holies. The iconostasis is designed in such a way that despite this division of space, the liturgy spoken and sung behind the partition can be understood in the community room.
The design of the images, icons , is traditionally subject to strict rules.
Orthodox churches do not have organs as Orthodox Christianity regards the human voice as the only legal instrument for offering praise to God.
Orthodox churches usually have no pews, but only a row of seats on the walls for the elderly and the weak. The majority of the congregation therefore stands during the liturgy.

In addition to the iconostasis, quite a few Orthodox churches are magnificently painted. Historically, the Byzantine Iconoclasm of the early Middle Ages is noteworthy, in which the iconoclasts turned against the decorations in churches, centuries before the iconoclasts at the time of the Western Church Reformation. At the Second Council of Nicaea (787) this dispute was ended by expressly approving the pictorial representation of Christ, the angels and the saints , with reference to the Incarnation of Christ. However, this only applies to two-dimensional (images). In this reminder of the biblical ban on images , sculptures are not common in Orthodox churches and are generally viewed with skepticism. In Greece as in Russia, the interior walls and vaults of churches were often decorated with mosaics. While in the early days these were preferably made of simple material ( glass mosaics ), later gold was not stingy.