Christian Buildings Research Articles

The Peaceful Kingdom of Isaiah in Late Antique Mosaic Pavements of Cilician and Isaurian Church Buildings

This article examines a topic that has been only partially investigated to date, namely that of the iconic depiction of the so-called “Peaceful Kingdom of Isaiah” on mosaics located in late antique church buildings in the region of Cilicia (southeastern modern Turkey). These mosaics are sometimes accompanied by the verse of Isaiah 11:6 or 65:25. Many of these Cilician mosaics lie in a state of neglect or have suffered great damage in recent years. Referring, therefore, to the excavation reports and to personal observations, I attempt a reconstruction of the iconography and of the mosaics’ locations within their respective Christian buildings, where possible. Starting with a short introduction on the meaning of the “Peaceful Kingdom” as described in Isaiah 11:6 and 65:25, the article presents a detailed analysis of the Cilician/Isaurian case studies. Similar examples from neighbouring regions in the East and the only identifiable case study in the West (Corsica) are also briefly discussed. Next, possible archetypes from which the representation of animals might have originated and influenced the origin of the “Peaceful Kingdom” motif are considered. In conclusion, after briefly outlining the different interpretations given by scholars on the meaning of the “Peaceful Kingdom” mosaics, an attempt will be made to interpret the Cilician case studies in light of a combined analysis both of positioning within the building and liturgical use.

Debating the domus ecclesiae at Dura-Europos: the Christian Building in context

Abstract At Dura-Europos, homes were architecturally adapted across the late 2nd and 3rd c. CE by different religious groups to serve the needs of their communities. Although the Synagogue, Mithraeum, and Christian Building all began as domestic structures and share a similar architectural development, the origins of the latter have received unique attention through its classification as a domus ecclesiae or house church. This (hyper)focus on the structure's past use as a house does not do full justice to the archaeology of the building. Through an analysis of architectural adaptations, including before-and-after 3D reconstructions and daylight simulations, the authors show how the renovations significantly differentiated the Christian Building from its domestic antecedent and from Dura's houses more broadly. This approach is meant to shift attention away from more generalized, translocal, evolutionary models of Christian architectural development to micro-level archaeological analysis that situates structures within the spatial vernacular of their local contexts.

The Christian Building at Dura-Europos: Rethinking the Archaeology of the World’s Oldest House Church

The Christian Building at Dura-Europos: Rethinking the Archaeology of the World’s Oldest House Church

문화적 도시재생에 의한 도시관광 개발과 방향

Purpose: This study is a case analysis of Yangrim-dong, Gwangju. For each of the five strategic sectors, the current status of implementation, performance, problems, and limitations so far were analyzed, and implications and future improvement directions were presented.
 Methods: Based on the theoretical review, an analysis framework was established by deriving five strategic elements necessary for cultural urban regeneration and urban tourism activation, and the current status and problems of each strategy were analyzed for Yanglim-dong and activation plans were proposed.
 Results: We analyzed the plan for revitalizing urban tourism in connection with the cultural urban regeneration of Yangrim-dong, the research target site, and proposed the revitalization plan. As a result of the study, meaningful implications are presented in that it pursues sustainability
 Conclusion: This study is significant in that it analyzes the process and status of cultural urban regeneration and urban tourism projects in Yanglim-dong, Gwangju, and suggests strategies to revitalize urban tourism through cultural urban regeneration in Yanglim-dong. First, open traditional and Christian buildings. Second, develop a travel program. Third, organize community governance to seek directions for development. Fourth, it is necessary to prepare guidelines for environmental landscape design. Accordingly, it is hoped that Yanglim-dong can become a representative urban tourism destination in Gwangju through multilateral search and help achieve sustainable development.

A Curious Problem in the Renovation of the Christian Building at Dura-Europos: Reconstructing the Use of Water in the Durene Baptismal Rite and its Ritual Significance

Abstract: Situating the Christian building of Dura-Europos within its ambient domestic context accentuates a curious problem: During the renovation in which the Christians of Dura converted this building into a worship space, this community installed a large water basin, presumably used for baptism. Yet concurrent with this transformation, Dura's Christians also paved over their house's cistern, located in the adjacent courtyard. Thus, as the Durene Christian community was installing a baptismal basin—a feature which required water—these Christians enigmatically removed the most convenient means by which they could have secured water to fill that basin. The following study aims to reconstruct how the Christians of Dura procured water for use in their baptismal rite and to examine why these Christians might have removed access to their cistern while simultaneously installing a baptismal basin. Recent scholarship on Dura has provided a sound footing for this examination by allowing the use of water at Dura to be reconstructed with substantial clarity. Examining the Christian building's transformation in light of this scholarship allows the Durene Christians' rejection of cistern water for use in their ritual of baptism to be situated comfortably within documented early Christian preferences to baptize in naturally-flowing waters.

Exterior vs. interior in early Maghribi mosques

AbstractEarly Islamic religious architecture in North Africa displays a marked change from earlier Classical and Christian buildings in their general neglect of exteriors in favour of interior (i.e., courtyard) façades. This feature may be due partly to the nature of Islamic worship, as it was common to virtually all early mosques, yet builders in the central and eastern lands of Islam soon began to adopt such exteriorizing features as domes, towers, and colourful decoration. Maghribi builders, however, maintained their preference for modest exteriors for many centuries, mostly focusing decoration on interior façades and spaces, and differentiating it from much Islamic architecture elsewhere.

Late Roman Emona: Understanding the transformation of the city

The archaeological remains of the Roman colony of Emona from the 4th and early 5th centuries point to a period of prosperity in the 4th century, a time of renewed infrastructure and new building development in several locations across the city, reinforcements to the city’s defence system, and in the second half of the 4th century there was also considerable investment in Christian buildings. At the same time, secular monuments and, in some cases, infrastructure such as the city moat and the cloacae were often abandoned or neglected.These changes were closely linked to a range of factors, an important one being the rise of Christianity. With the ongoing Christianisation of Emona, a diocese from the 4th century, the character of urban life was gradually transformed, as well as city’s appearance.

Medieval Norwegian Wooden (Stave) Churches: Built Heritage and Places of Memory

This paper focuses on the Norwegian medieval religious buildings called stave churches. The word stave (meaning ‘post, pole’ in Norwegian) derives from the buildings’ post and lintel construction, giving the churches their characteristic style. The structures display a highly developed tradition of wooden Christian buildings, which during the Middle Ages (1050–1500) where the most common in Norway, their number can be estimated at around a thousand. There were probably at least as widespread in other areas (e.g. on the territory of present-day Germany and Russia), but they did not remain in such a large number from the early period. However, the number have declined dramatically, and today only 28 are preserved. The article aims to expand the knowledge of the unique and irreplaceable wooden architecture of the stave churches. Although we consider the wooden churches to be one of the characteristics of Scandinavia traditionally, they mix and carry the influences of other cultures and countries. The heritage and memorial role of wooden churches, as well as the motif of the combination of different architectural and religious elements, represent an interesting comparison to similar phenomena in the Carpathian Basin. Transylvania and especially the Maramureş region are also famous for their wooden churches and the rich carved and painted iconostasis.

THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE QUR’ANIC QUOTATION ‘MĀ SHĀ' ALLĀH’ ON BOTH OTTOMAN AND GREEK HERITAGES IN THE BALKANS

Mā shāʾ Allāh is an Arabic expression used as a spoken amulet in Arabian culture prior Islam, and continued in Islamic heritage, to protect from the evil eye or to bring well luck even. This paper surveys the ‘Mā shāʾ Allāh' and related inscriptions Yā Ḥāfiẓ' and Yā Ḥafīẓ in the Balkans. It focuses on the extant writings on ottoman buildings in Greece. In this regard, it publishes a group of new inscription. The study also investigates the visual impact of such inscriptions. It analyses these inscriptions considering functional, regional, chronological and calligraphic stylistic criteria. The paper characterises the meaning of the ‘Mā shāʾ Allāh' inscription either as a direct message or as a mirror reflects some aspects of the period and society to which belongs. Moreover, it examines the significance of writing the Mā shāʾ Allāh in Greek alphabet ‘Mάσαλα and Μασαλαχ' on Christian buildings and objects. The paper concludes that the Mā shāʾ Allāh acquired over centuries a popular folkloric cultural concept as a talisman to protect from the evil eye rather than its own original religious expression.

Exploring the landscape dimension of the early medieval churches. A case study from A Mariña region (north-west Spain)

ABSTRACT Despite the long tradition of studies on early medieval churches, little is still known about the reasons behind the selection of specific places for building churches between the fifth to tenth centuries a.d . Thanks to some rich historical documents, the region of A Mariña (Galicia, north-west Iberia) represents an exceptional case study in order to analyse the spatial logic behind the creation of the early medieval ecclesiastical landscapes. This objective is pursued by means of the application of GIS and spatial statistics for the study of the locational patterns of these first Christian buildings. As this is a first attempt, we started from the formal analysis of topographic variables; then a settlement model for the churches was defined, and next used to analyse specific trends on their locational dynamics. The results allow us to propose that the location of the early medieval churches should be related to visual and territorial control over some specific areas of the landscape (mainly settlements and natural resources). This suggests that, despite the variety of church founders, some kind of collective planning of the church network did happen during the early Middle Ages. This fact can be historically explained as a key part of power strategies aimed at the creation of a new territorial articulation during this period.

Santa Maria Assunta di Mariana (Lucciana, Haute-Corse ). Architettura e scultura

In 1118 the archbishop of Pisa solemnly consecrated the new cathedral of Santa Maria Assunta di Mariana, seat of the diocese of the same name. The largest Romanesque Corsican church insists on an area that has brought back important testimonies of the Roman settlement and Christian buildings of worship since the 5th century. The present intervention aims to re-read the monument in its structural and decorative features to highlight its links with upper Tuscany and Liguria, in a wider framework of the circulation of workers and construction techniques in the Tyrrhenian area.

“CENTOCHIESE”: A HUNDRED CHURCHES IN ROME. AN ARCHIVAL PHOTOGRAMMETRIC PROJECT

Abstract. Rome is the city where two different cultures have found their greatest architectural achievement, the Latin civilization and the Christian civilization. It is for this reason that in Rome there is the greatest concentration in the world of Roman buildings, monuments and Christian buildings and churches. Rome is the seat of the papacy; say the head of the Christian Church. Every religious order, every Christian nation has created its own headquarters in Rome, the most representative possible, as beautiful, magnificent as possible. The best artists, painters, sculptors, architects, have been called to Rome to create their masterpieces.This study describes the photogrammetric documentation of selected noteworthy churches in Rome. Spherical Photogrammetry is the technique used. The survey is limited to the facades only, being a very significant part of the monument and since no permission is necessary. In certain cases, also the church interior was documented. A total of 170 Churches were surveyed. The statistics that one can derive from such a large number is particularly meaningful. Rome is the ideal place to collect the largest possible number of such cases. This study was motivated by the desire to provide technicians, architects, engineers and students with a technique that is easy to use and accessible and to show the great potential of the used photogrammetric technique. This article is a prelude to a book where all the panoramas obtained will be presented and made available to a larger public. Guidelines and tools to plot the facades will also be made available.

The Jewish Minority of Dura-Europos

This article accomplishes two goals. The first is to update Carl Kraeling’s seating capacities for the Dura Europos synagogue by applying the methodology from Ancient Synagogue Seating Capacities: Methodology, Analysis and Limits. Using the detailed methodology, this article shows that the synagogue in Dura Europos could have accommodated more worshippers than previously thought. The second goal is to analyze the resulting data in an effort to better locate the Jewish community within the city of Dura. The first part of the analysis focuses internally on the Jewish community, looking at the size of the worship community and the Jewish population of Dura. The second part considers the Jewish community within the wider local context in an effort to test Kraeling’s assertion that it was a “relatively small and unimportant” minority community. Although the updated seating capacities suggest that the Jewish community was only a small percentage of the total population of Dura, by comparing the seating capacity of the synagogue building with the seating capacities of the Christian building and Mithraeum, this article suggests that the Jewish community was more significant in terms of population than other minority religious groups in the city and that it experienced the most growth in the final decades of the city’s existence.

Public Space After the Ecclesiastical Disentailments in Cordova

Cordova undergoes a major transformation in its city planning in the 19th century, after more than 500 years, as a result of one of the most relevant economic and social processes in the history of Spain: the eclesiastical disentailment. The city, on its almost 225 hectares, had 32 conventual complexes within its walls. They were, talking about size, really important Christian buildings, built in a city with an intricate and twisted street layout, inherited from the Islamic population who inhabited the city for 5 centuries. Changes experienced affected significantly the urban morphology. Thus, the research goes deeply into that process. After studying the 46 monasteries that existed in Cordova at the end of the Modern Age and their following evolution, we focus on some of the most important public spaces, derived from that transformation, that exist in the historic center of the Cordova, in order to understand the origin of the city’s current configuration. After analysing all the convents, we distinguish two situations: on the one hand we have the ones that maintain their original use, on the other hand those that have lost it. Of this second group, some of them are preserved adopting different functions while others disappear. Those are the ones that are of special interest to us, as they have led to the appearance of some of the most emblematic public spaces in Cordova within the walls. A study of these urban changes has been carried out, methodologically relying on documentary research, historical layout and bibliographic. Therefore, we have been able to conclude that, of the 37 convents in the city center (5 of them bordering the outside of the wall), 26 lost their original use, of which 10 caused important changes in the plot, such as the opening of new avenues, squares or even neighbourhoods. The impact of these changes and how they had an essential influence on a key process of redefining the city throughout the 19th and 20th centuries will be highlighted.

The Action of Christian Buildings on their Chinese Environment

This article explores the ways in which Christians are building churches in contemporary Nanping, China. At first glance, their architectural style appears simply neo-Gothic, but these buildings indeed enact a rich web of significances that acts upon local Christians and beyond. Building on Actor-Network Theory and exploring the multiple ties in which they are embedded, I argue that these buildings are agents acting in their own right, which take an active part in the process of making the presence of the Christian God tangible.

La rete ecclesiastica in Toscana settentrionale (IV-X secolo). Dati e riflessioni alla luce del progetto CARE

The aim of this paper is to present a general overview of the formation and diffusion of the ecclesiastical network, both urban and rural, in the territory corresponding to the actual boundaries of Northern Tuscany, from the 4th century A.D. to the 10th. The research is based on the CARE project (directed by M. Jurkovic and G.P. Brogiolo), in which the author is studying and recording all the churches for such area. The diffusion of a topography of the christian buildings starts from the late 4th-early 5th century in the major towns, such as Lucca and Firenze where, by the end of the 6th, is fully spread, comprehending also important funerary buildings in the suburbia; in the rural areas, instead, the diffusion of the churches in the Late Antique centuries seems to be weaker, even though significant buildings are well known, like San Piero a Grado and others, signs of a progressive christianization of the countrysides, which will reach its heyday from the Lombard era onwards and, even more, in the Carolin...

GIS of thechoraof Cyrene: fortifications and Christian buildings in Late Antiquity

AbstractThe project of mapping thechoraof Cyrene, for the team of Chieti University, started between 1999 and 2001 as a layer of a ‘macro-GIS’ of the area to the east of Cyrene, that is, the transect between Cyrene and El-Gubba/Qubbah. Because of the large scale of the area and the monumentality of the sites, the team is composed of several research units based around a large number of scholars and technicians. The project employs a suite of traditional methodologies for the study of landscape archaeology (surveys, GIS mapping, differential GPS, excavations), in combination with technologies integrating the knowledge of the territory (remote sensing on HD satellite photos, geomorphological reconstruction, laser scanning, archaeometric analysis, non-invasive geophysical prospection and infrared diagnostic analysis). The large quantity of data coming from this wide approach has been organised into a flexible and multilayer GIS. A joint team of Libyan and Italian archaeologists and technicians is testing a common protocol for monitoring the monuments and sites in the territory, using surveys and remote sensing analysis, which has intensified during these problematic periods, and regularly analysing satellite sets over the past four years.The project aims to map and document as much as possible in this territory, to identify the location of the region's so-called ‘minor sites’, which are numerous and almost unknown. They were, from the Late Classical to the Islamic periods, vital sites for the management of the local economy. This paper presents the main issues relating to settlements and sites in Late Antiquity, concentrating mainly on fortifications along thelimesand basilicas within the area of the transect. Moreover, in the presentation of the data, the GIS approach has been integrated here with data coming both from the remote sensing and from more traditional research approaches, such as planimetrical and typological analysis of the buildings, study of the sources and detailed mapping of the building techniques.

The Syrian influence over the Late Antique mosaics in Philippopolis, Thrace

The paper deals with mosaic pavements from Philippopolis, the capital of the Late antique province of Thrace, which are supposed to be made after Syrian influence or by masters from that region. Three main types of examples are studied: 1). variations of standard geometric schemes which are repeated; 2). variations of motifs which are close parallels and 3). repetition of similar figural images. The examples come either from Early Christian buildings or richly decorated private dwellings. Despite the similarities between the mosaics of Philippopolis and those in Syria, some discrepancies also appear. It seems that the ‘Syrian’ influence was transmitted indirectly via the metropolitan masters, i. e. those from Constantinople, by following the decoration of a building in the provincial capital or home city or by immigrants and realized by the local masters. The metropolitan influence in Thrace, however, was enormous and spread in two ways: by simply copying the decoration of what was in the metropolis by the local patrons and the elite in Thrace and second one - through special imperial policy. And this is clearly visible in the second half of 4th c. at the earliest, but mostly after the decision of Theodosius I to settle in Constantinople when all of a sudden, Thrace from a remote province became part of the hinterland of the metropolis.

La supuesta basílica de San Vicente en Córdoba: de mito histórico a obstinación historiográfica

Underneath the Great-Mosque of Cordoba, there are some archaeological remains which have been the origin of several historiographical debates. The core of these debates was the idea that there were previous Christian buildings in the site later demolished to make room for the Umayyad mosque. However, the documented church of Saint Vincent, for the astonishment of many, did not appear in the excavations made in the 1930s. Much later, set aside the myth, but never truly forgotten, the idea that there might have been a full episcopal complex suceeded the other. Recent historigraphical developments are building new interpretations upon an archaeological evidence, that drove archaeologists, in the past, to deny definitively the presence of these ecclesiastical premises. This article argues what others have already stated: that according to the present archaeological knowledge, no evidence shows that there were previous Christian buildings under the Umayyad mosque. In terms of our conclusions, the article is not original. The main aim of this contribution is to offer a new and neccesary contextualizacion of textual and archaeological interpretations of emphirical data.

ROMAN SPECTACLES BUILDINGS AS A SETTING FOR MARTYRDOM AND ITS CONSEQUENCES IN THE CHRISTIAN ARCHITECTURE

In the framework of the study of Christian buildings in the ruins of amphitheaters, theaters, stadiums and Roman circuses, becomes appropriate to develop some reflections mainly aimed helping to explain the symbolic dimension acquired by the ludic background in which a far from negligible part of the Christian martyrdoms took place, as outlined on the preserved sources. Although this ludic substrate is not the only factor to be considered, it’s the one that allowed the hagiographers composing stories —some with more historical veracity than others— with architectural settings charged with symbolism, where the victory of the martyrs as “athletes of Christ” was equated to the victory in secular games. All this greatly contributes to explain the subsequent relationship between Christian building and playful architecture occurred from the late fourth and early fifth century, and detected in the late antique and early medieval topography of some Roman cities. However, this issue has gone relatively unnoticed for Archeology, and when the two key elements —building and church— appear, with few exceptions, they are considered separately in case of being subjected to some kind of study.