Prethodno priopćenje
Remains of the Paleo-Christian Sculpture in the St. Martha's Church of Bijaći
Pascale Chevalier
; Universite Blaise Pascal, UFR LLSH, 29 Bd Gergovia F-63037 Clermont-Ferrand Cedex
Sažetak
The sculpture presented in this catalogue are the paleoChristian stone church fixtures discovered in the course ojthe two research campaigns at the locality of St. Martha (Sv. Marta) in Bijaći. The first one, headed by F. Bulić, was performed by the Croatian Society for Exploring the National History of Split (Hrvatsko društvo za istraživanje domaće povijesti u Spijetu) The then excavated artefacts are situated at the very locality or are kept in the depot and the lapidarium of the Archaeological Museum of Split. All of them were listed between 1902 and 1905 in the Museum ~ Inventary B, however, marks of this first inventorying have been preserved in traces only. 1/accompanied with the mark BIH (the Bihać Collection), the preserved numbers and letters are written in red paint. Several fragments from this site have been reinventoried in the last twenty years and makeparts of the Inventary Eor S,which explains the multiple inventary references. The exception is a sarcophagus entered in the Museum ~ Inventary A.
During the second stage of the excavations, headed by Dušan jelovina and Dasen Vrsalović, from 1967to 1969,a large number of paleo-Christian fragments were found, too, some of them still at the site and some, mostly smaller and better preserved anes, taken to the Croatian Archaeological Monuments Museum (Muzej hrvatskih arheoloških spomenika) at Split. Presently, they are stored in the Museum~ depot. It is to be underlined here that the jelovina's and Vrsalović-field inventories record and catalogue all artefacts they found at the site during the excavations, including those already inventoried at the Bulić time.
This catalogue records all paleo-Christian artefacts from the site, regardless of where they are now: at the site in Bijaći, in the Archaeological Museum at Split, or in the Croatian Archaeological Monuments Museum at Split. Sometimes, it was hard to determine whether, for instance, a column fragment in the Bulić's inventary is Roman, paleo-Christian or early-medieval, the data sometimes even lacking the dimensions that could enable a more precise classification. Nevertheless, the collected material still enables creation of an acceptable image of the decorations and fixtures from the paleo-Christian church with baptistery, surrounded with burials in sarcophaguses. All the preserved fragments have been classified into two groups:
-architectural elements (thresholds, window columns, imposts, window latticeworks, bases, shafts and capitals of the vessel colonnades);
-liturgical elements (altar and auxiliary table, altar or baptistery font ciborium, high cancellum and ambo).
Eventually, the entire materialproved sufficient to date the construction of the church (or its equipping) to the (6th century, or the second half of the (6th century for the ambo. It is noticed too that the church with its baptistery and liturgical fixtures fit perjectly the closer regional context, powerfully influenced by Salona, which is perfectly understandable.
It is also interesting to notice that the location of the baptistery is not of the so called Salonitan type, although the closest parallels of capitals from the church in Bij'aći are at Gradina and in the southern apse of the medieval church of Ss, Peter and Moses of Solin, Finally, this church and baptistery, most probably dedicated to St. John the Baptist, are built on top of the remains of a Roman villa, and finely depict the Christianity in the rural community of the Salonitan diocesis in the 6th century.
Ključne riječi
Hrčak ID:
92991
URI
Datum izdavanja:
22.10.1999.
Posjeta: 1.467 *