Early Christian and Byzantine Architecture
Byzantium, (mythologically it was Byzas, son of Poseidon, who founded the first settlement) ancient site on which Constantinople was built by emperor Constantine in 330 B.C. gave the name to the Byzantine empire. This empire, which lasted for over 1000 years until 1453, when Constantinople fell to the Turks, was a direct continuation of the Roman empire. Byzantium was a cultural unity at a time in which the rest of Europe was broken into numerous feudal units.
Icon, Mount Athos
- Codification of Roman law. Justinian, 6th c.
- Arts: crosses for processions, Reliquaries for the remains of saints, treasuries in the monasteries.
- Constantinople the centre of the new empire and the beginning of a new era. Cardus and decumanus : North and South/Europe and Asia, East and West/Mediterranean and Black Seas. See Constantinople
- Christianity, the new religion. Its impact on the landscape: churches. Scheme of church decoration by Michael III (see Hosios Lukas.)
Catholicon, Hosios Lukas, exterior, from R.G. Calkins, Monuments of Medieval Art, New York/London 1979, p. 42
Iconostasis, Hosios Lukas from R.G. Calkins, Monuments of Medieval Art, New York/London 1979, pl. 5-6
- The concepts of centre and path and their impact on the design of churches: longitudinal in the East and centralized on the West.
- Pendentives and Squinches.
- Spatial transition from the secular space to the sacred, the latter characterized by a dematerialization of the walls through the use of mosaics and frescoes. The concept of cosmic representation through the domes in the Byzantine church.
- The creation of monasticism in the Byzantine empire and its spreading to the West: St. Amthony, 4th c.; Benedict of Nursia (c. 480-553) and the Benedictine order. Meteora and Mount Athos, this latter founded by St. Athanasius the Athonite in 973.
See Mount Athos, Greece
- As pointed by C. Norberg-Schulz, "The Early Christian enclosure did not represent a particular place, like the Greek temenos or a general order like the Roman templum , but concretized a way of life."
- The Greek and Roman cella vs the new church spaces (chancel and nave).
Additional references in Fordham University which contain valuable information on different aspects of Early Christian and Byzantine culture.
The Medieval spatial order: village, castle, monastery.
The fall of the Western Roman Empire 5th c. Sack of Rome in 410.
Charlemagne's Holy Roman Empire, c. 800.
Illuminated manuscripts, Book of Kells c. 800; Latin.
Alcuin of York and his educational structuring of higher learning: "Quadrivium" (mathematics. algebra, astronomy, and music) and "Trivium" (rhetoric, grammar, and logic).
Buildings examined:
- Church of the Holy Sepulchre, Jerusalem, 335.
- Old St. Peter's, Rome, begun c. 333.
- S. Constanza, Rome, c. 345. A church for a saint who never existed.
- S. Sabina, Rome, c. 422-3.
- S. Maria in Cosmedin , Rome. Cf. Le Corbusier, Towards a New Architecture,pp. 148-51.
- San Vitale, Ravenna, c. 525.
- H. Sergios and Bacchos, Constantinople, begun c. 525.
- Hagia Sophia (Holy Wisdom), Contantinople, 532-37. Architects: Anthemius of Tralles and Isidorus of Miletus.
- S. Mark's, Venice, 830.
- Charlemagne's Palatine Chapel, Aachen (Aix la Chapelle), 792-805, based on San Vitale.
- Monte Casino (Benedictine Monastery).
- St. Gall. Conceptual plan c. 820.
- Byzantine monasteries and churches: Meteora, Mount Athos and Mystra.
Last reviewed: August 2004
