St. Gajane Church

St. Gajane Church with a gavit in front

Fresco on the tympanum of the entrance portal

View of the dome and the octagonal drum with the chandelier hanging below

Built in the 7th century Armenian Apostolic Saint Gayane Church ( Սուրբ Գայանե Surb Gayane ) in Echmiadzin (province of Armavir in Armenia ) than since 2000 UNESCO World Heritage listed and is just a few hundred meters from the Etchmiadzin Cathedral, the Seat of the Catholicos , removed. According to the historian and Catholic Howhannes Draschanakertzi, who officiated in the 10th century, it was built between 630 and 634 by Catholicos Ezra I. Despite renovation work after the church roof collapsed in 1653, during which the dome remained undamaged, the structure of the St. Gajane Church has remained unchanged to this day.

history

The St. Gajane Church was built on the site of the Gajane martyrdom . Saint Gajane was an abbess and teacher of the Hripsime , who is said to have been a relative of the Roman Emperor Claudius and who fled from the coveted Emperor Diocletian with 70 virgins and Gajane from a Roman monastery via Edessa to Armenia. There the Armenian King Trdat III. attention to her, but she did not want to be his wife, but to remain a nun, which is why he had her beheaded. Gajane, who after the death of Hripsime also from Trdat III. was coveted and rejected him, and 38 of the virgins who fled Rome were executed in 301 other places in Etchmiadzin. The king later converted to Christianity and made it the state religion.

According to the legend handed down by the Armenian historian Agathangelos in 491, Jesus showed Gregory the Illuminator in a vision the place of the martyrdom of the Hripsime, Gajanes and the 35 virgins by hitting the relevant places with a golden hammer. He asked him to erect tombs there in their memory, so that the churches of St. Hripsime , St. Gajane and Surb Schoghakat were built. Together with the Etchmiadzin Cathedral , these churches are all part of the world cultural heritage.

architecture

The St. Gajane Church is a three-aisled basilica . The vierfenstrige Tambour the dome above the center of the church is octagonal and rests inside on four free-standing columns, which the three naves divide. The area between the freestanding columns functions as a transition room that cannot be assigned to any of the three naves. Four larger trumpets are used to transition the inner structure into the octagonal shape of the drum , eight smaller ones for the transition from the drum to the actual dome. A few more trumpets are fan-shaped and extend from one church wall to another.

The middle parts of the side aisles are slightly raised compared to their corners and end in a barrel vault , which creates a transept in conjunction with the central dome . Furthermore, the cross arms from the central yoke are higher than those from the corners, which makes the church appear cross-shaped from the outside in view of its high dome. On the east side of St. Hripsime Church is a semicircular apse with a rectangular chamber to the north and south of it. During renovations from 1651 to 1653, the presbytery was renewed and a chapel was built under the apse containing the relics of Saint Gayane.

The entrances to the church are on the west, north and south sides. In front of the main portal in the west, the tympanum of which is adorned with a fresco depicting saints, is a five-bay, continuous gavit , which was added as a burial place for churchmen from 1683 to 1688 and replaced a narthex from the 12th to 13th centuries. Its three central yokes each end in a vault and open outwards in an arched gate. The two lateral, also arched yokes are surrounded on three sides by a wall and have small, four-pass windows on the outside . On the roof they have smaller, six-column domes. Due to the two outer yokes, the gavit is slightly longer than the original west side of the St. Gajane Church and has niches on the inner wall with frescoes depicting churchmen. Khachkars from the 11th century, which were originally integrated into the medieval narthex, were later removed or partially separated, giving the corresponding places the character of a paved path. In the 18th to 19th centuries, a decorative wall with an entrance portal was added to the west of the church.

On the altarpiece the Virgin Mary is depicted with the baby Jesus. The raised choir rests on tufa, in the front of which crosses and floral motifs are incorporated, which were repaired in the 17th to 18th centuries. In the church there is a large chandelier, probably from the 18th century, hanging under the central dome, on whose metal loops glass vessels are attached that have held oil and wicks. All of the frescoes in St. Gajane's Church date from the 19th century.