Sao Gião (Nazaré)

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The São Gião Church , in Portuguese Igreja de São Gião , is one of the oldest Christian churches in Portugal and the Iberian Peninsula . It is of Visigothic (Visigothic) origin and probably dates from the 7th or 8th century. It is said to have been built on the remains of a Roman Neptune temple . The church is located in the Portuguese parish of Famalicão , south of Nazaré . It was discovered in the 1960s and is in the state of archaeological exploration. Even if the dating and classification are disputed in detail, there is agreement that it is one of the earliest examples of Christian architecture, some of which have survived, on the Iberian Peninsula.

Arcades

location

Quinta de São Gião with church

The church is located in the Quinta de São Gião on the northern border of the municipality of Famalicão, about five kilometers south of Nazaré. It is located at the foot of an approximately 100 m high ridge, about 500 m from the sea, which forms the coastline in this region. The church, which was used until the middle of the 17th century, was placed under monument protection in 1986. It began to deteriorate in the 18th century and finally went into an agricultural outbuilding. When it was rediscovered, the roof and part of the walls collapsed. Today it is presented under large corrugated iron panels to protect it and the archaeological work that has been going on for decades. Around them there are still remains of floor slabs, which were apparently part of a larger square. An aqueduct ran past it, remains of which have been preserved.

description

Before the discovery of the church, around 1900
Vault
Ornaments

The entire height of the church, with its walls made of rubble, has been preserved. It has a single nave with a grandstand above the entrance on the east side. There are arcades on both sides of the nave , towards the apse there is a transept, which is divided by two columns. The apse is rectangular. The building is 10.7 m wide and 13.85 m long, the ship itself is only 6.6 m long and 3.9 m wide. The chancel is separated from the nave by a wall that extends up to the roof, which has an 80 cm wide door in the middle with an arch at the top and two small windows on the side, which could probably be closed with iron wings. It is an early form of iconostasis , a choir screen that separates the altar, the area used for sacred activities, including the choir, as the area for priests and clergy, from the nave, which was available to the faithful. The arcades served as a connection to a zone that could have served as a presbytery, meeting place for church superiors. This zone is destroyed. It had a right-angled floor plan and was covered with a vault. The ship is divided into divisions that allow access to simple doors and side rooms.

São Gião is the only church in Portugal known to have an iconostasis (choir screen). In Spain there are still some early Romanesque churches from this period (chapel near Viguera - La Rioja), where the choir and lay room are separated by barriers, but not by a wall as in São Gião. It is assumed that it is a monastery church in which the religious performed liturgical chants and acts in the separate choir and transept.

Visigothic origin

In the first decade after its discovery, the church was examined with the participation of the German Archaeological Institute , Madrid branch . It was assigned to the pre-Moorish period (i.e. before 711) and the Visigothic period. Most of the Iberian Peninsula was ruled by the Visigoths from around 470 to 711 , who had been converted to Arian Christianity by Wulfila in the 4th century . The Christianization of the Iberian Peninsula came to an end during the Hispanic Empire of the Visigoths , so that Christian monuments from the Visigothic period are among the earliest of their kind. Meanwhile, the Visigoths played an important role in the Christianization of Hispania. While Christian churches on the Iberian Peninsula are only documented in written sources for the 4th and 5th centuries, there is a church for the 6th century that could be identical to a church excavated under the cathedral of Barcelona . It was not until the 7th century that a total of 13 churches were recorded and identified, including the church of São Giãó.

Disputed assignment

Some Portuguese archaeologists have recently questioned this assignment, they classify the church as an Asturian church, a genus to which a few churches on the Iberian Peninsula are grouped that were built before or during the Moorish occupation and were used by Moçarab Christians . Moçarab Christians were Iberians who remained religious under the rule of the Moors and who built new Christian churches in regions that were not or no longer controlled by the Moors. It seems questionable that this would have happened in São Gião under the eyes of the Moors living in the Alfeizerão castle just a few kilometers away .

For their view, the authors cite certain design elements (such as the wooden grandstand - in a different opinion, see below, just reference to an early church origin) and material investigations. On the other hand, they confirm that the components contain Visigoth components ( Spolia ) that were used previously . Other authors also see Muslim elements as a reality. Regardless of this question, however, all scholars agree that the location of the church dates back to the Visigoth and probably even to the Roman period. In the immediate vicinity, objects from the Visigothic and Roman times were found alongside medieval utensils. You will be in the Museum Etnográfico e Arqueológico Dr. Joaquim Manso kept in Sítio, Nazaré.

The site of the church, Quinta de São Gião, is in a slightly elevated position on the edge of a zone that only silted up in the 18th century. Before that, the bay of Nazaré with the bay of Nazaré that existed in the 16th and 17th centuries bordered here During the Portuguese voyages of discovery, the port of Pederneira was active. This port was also used by the Moors. During the Reconquista they carried out their attacks against the monks who built the monastery of Alcobaça , as in 1195. The finds from Roman times also point to an earlier use. The church of São Gião, regardless of the exact chronological classification of its individual components, bears witness to an early pre-Moorish culture in this area, presumably located on the edge of a harbor.

Choir screen

Early Christian choir screen

This cultural and temporal connection also lets the choir screen appear in a different light. Choir barriers, i.e. the separation of the chancel, which is reserved for sacred acts, from the meeting room for the faithful, which restricts the view, originated in the early church and have been known since the 4th century especially in the area of ​​Eastern and Eastern Christianity. They are said to go back to pre-Christian temple cults, but the sacred space was also separated by a curtain in the Jewish temple . In early Byzantium there are examples of partitions using components such as columns, doors and arches. It was not until the following centuries, especially after the end of the iconoclasm in Byzantium in 787, that the iconostasis with icons, which gave this facility its name, became widely accepted. According to the type of choir screen, as it is in Saõ Gião, it obviously comes from the early church Eastern / Oriental tradition of an iconostasis, which also speaks for the early dating of the church in the first interpretation. It is also the only example of an iconastasis or choir screen in Portugal. The Asturian churches of Portugal do not know any, so the use of a choir screen also indicates an early connection to Eastern and Eastern Christianity. Schlunk-Hauschild also point out that the use of a gallery did not occur in the early days on the Iberian Peninsula, but was often found in the east of the Mediterranean and North Africa.

Early mentions

Information in late medieval historiography also speaks for this early Christian interpretation. In 1597 , Frei Bernardo de Brito , who belonged to the Chronistas de Alcobaça , the historians of the monastery of Alcobaça , pointed out that São Gião was a saint who was especially venerated in the Visigothic period. The name Gião is derived from "São Julião", Saint Julian. The church of São Gião is also mentioned by the Alcobaçer chronicler of the 17th century Frei António Brandão , who reports that the church began to deteriorate after a sharp decline in population due to a plague at the time of the second Portuguese king Sancho I (1154-1211). According to later reports, it was used as a stable in 1702 after it had not been used for cult activities since the middle of the 17th century. The Abbey of Alcobaça, under whose jurisdiction the region was, had given it up in the 15th or 16th century.

Legends from Roman times

Various legends - including the chronicler Frei Bernardo de Brito reported about it in 1608 - reported a battle that took place in the area of ​​the Bay of Nazeré, in which a Roman consul named Décio Juno Bruto led the Roman legions to victory and in gratitude to the gods built a temple there. Décio Juno Bruto was actually between 140 and 130 BC. BC Governor of the province of Hispania Ulterior , at that time one of the two Roman provinces on the Iberian Peninsula , and played a decisive role in the end of the 155-138 BC, which was victorious for the Romans. Under the leadership of the legendary Lusitan hero Viriato , he contributed to the Lusitan War , in which the local inhabitants were temporarily supported by Carthage (see Third Punic War ). With the end of the war, the Romans took possession of the entire west of the Iberian Peninsula for the first time and thus also of the Atlantic coast. The war was mainly fought in the south and later also in the north, but there are some actions by Décio Juno Bruto who are settled in the region of the city of Scallabis , as today's city of Santarém was called in Roman times. Scallabis formed one of the three subdistricts of the later Roman province of Lusitania , which also includes the area of ​​today's Nazaré district. This legend has a real reference to the fact that Schlunk-Hauschild consider it possible that the church of São Gião was built on a Roman Neptune temple.

Legends from Christian times

On the other side of this former bay, about 4.5 km above Nazaré in Sítio, is the Santuário de Nossa Senhora da Nazaré , the sanctuary of Our Lady of Nazareth, the most important for centuries (and up to the beginning of the 20th century) Portuguese pilgrimage site where a black nursing Madonna from the first millennium is venerated. According to legend, this figure was brought to Sítio by the last Christian king of the Iberian Peninsula, the Visigoth Roderich , on his flight from the Moors who had conquered the Iberian Peninsula in 711. The Madonna is said to have been hidden from the Muslims there until it was rediscovered in 1179 by a companion of the first king of Portugal, after the Moors had been driven out of this area again. According to some authors, this legend is now confirmed by a small early Christian monastic community in the area of ​​the church of São Gião, only a few kilometers away from the hiding place, which on the one hand could have served as the goal of the flight of the last Christian king of Hispania (according to historical sources King Roderich fell in the decisive battle against the Moors on the Guadalete river in 711), on the other hand, this early Christian site also gives another possible explanation for the origin of the equally early Christian Madonna discovered in Sítio in the 12th century.

See also

literature

  • Helmut Schlunk : The Church of S. Gião near Nazaré. In: Madrid Communications. Volume 12, 1971, pp. 205-240.
  • Helmut Schlunk, Theodor Hauschild : Hispania Antiqua, The monuments of the early Christian and Visigoth times. Philipp von Zabern, Mainz 1978, ISBN 3-8053-0276-2 , pp. 213-214 plate 115.
  • Achim Arbeiter : Architecture and Cult in the Visigothic Period. The São Gião de Nazaré Church. In: Hermanfrid Schubart, Achim Arbeiter, Sabine Noack-Haley (Ed.): Finds in Portugal. Göttingen / Zurich 1993, pp. 177–196, plates 54–57.
  • Thomas G. Schattner (Ed.): Archaeological guide through Portugal (= cultural history of the ancient world . Vol. 74). Philipp von Zabern, Mainz 1998, ISBN 3-8053-2313-1 p. 116

Web links

Commons : Church of São Gião  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Helmut Schlunk speaks of a “key monument for the sacred architecture of the Visigoth period”.
  2. ↑ Igreja de São Gião. In: Pesquisa Geral - Pesquisa do Patrimonio. Direção Geral do Património Cultural , accessed March 23, 2018 (Portuguese).
  3. ^ Maria Isabel Rocha: Do altar cristão- a evolução até à fixacão do modela pela reforma católica. 1999, tese de mestrado, pp. 71, 143.
  4. ↑ Helmut Schlunk, Theodor Hauschild: The monuments of the early Christian and Visigoth times. Philipp von Zabern, Mainz 1978, ISBN 3-8053-0276-2 , p. 213.
  5. ↑ Achim Arbeiter: Architecture and Cult in the Visigothic Period. The São Gião de Nazaré Church. In: Hermanfrid Schubart, Achim Arbeiter, Sabine Noack-Haley (Ed.): Finds in Portugal. Göttingen / Zurich 1993, pp. 177–196.
  6. ↑ Helmut Schlunk, Theodor Hauschild: The monuments of the early Christian and Visigoth times. Philipp von Zabern, Mainz 1978, ISBN 3-8053-0276-2 , pp. 36 and 88.
  7. ↑ Conjunto monumental urbano e enquadramento paisagístico da Nazaré. In: Pesquisa Geral - Pesquisa do Patrimonio. Direção Geral do Património Cultural , accessed March 23, 2018 (Portuguese).
  8. ↑ History of the Iconostasis, [1] (English); in the Portuguese standard historical work: História de Portugal, Volume 1, Antes de Portugal , Lisbon 1993, Editorial Estampa, ISBN 972-33-0920-3 , p. 517, the choir screen is described as an invention of the Mozarabic cult (the Christians among the Moors) and as typical for the Asturian temples (with all the others the barriers have apparently fallen victim to conversions and São Gião is the only remaining example), but this is historically incorrect.
  9. ↑ Helmut Schlunk, Theodor Hauschild: The monuments of the early Christian and Visigoth times. Philipp von Zabern, Mainz 1978, ISBN 3-8053-0276-2 , p. 95.
  10. ↑ José Mattoso (Ed.): História de Portugal. Volume 1: Antes de Portugal. Editorial Estampa, Lisbon 1993, ISBN 972-33-0920-3 , pp. 217-218.

Coordinates: 39 ° 33 '46.9 "  N , 9 ° 5' 22.7"  W.