Preliminary communication
Appearance and liturgical function of the “pseudo-three-apses” element in Dalmatia
Kristina Babić
orcid.org/0000-0001-7231-7419
; Bobani 9 HR – 21231 Klis
Abstract
From the 10th century, churches with a specific articulation of the sanctuary started to appear in the area of Dalmatia. In most cases these are single-nave churches, whose eastern corpus consists of a central apse
that is flanked with two morphologically and functionally similar architectural elements. Due to their reduced dimensions, it would not be entirely correct to name them apses. The term niche also does not seem
appropriate as they usually have a decorative function. Since the sanctuary is the conceptual and functional nucleus of every church- because the main liturgy takes place there- its creation is not left to chance, but is rather the result of careful consideration and “harmonization” with the needs of the ceremony. We therefore propose the term pseudo-apse for the aforementioned architectural element. In this regard we also propose to call the group of churches, whose sanctuaries are shaped in this form, churches with a pseudo-threeapses sanctuary.
At the moment, we consider the following churches to belongto this group: St. Peter the Great and St. Cosmas and Damien in Dubrovnik; St. Peter in the field of Ston, St. George in Ponikve and St. Philip and Jacob (originally St. Theodor/ St. Cosmas and Damian) in Prve Ponikve on the peninsula Pelješac; St. Peter and Paul in Korita on the island Mljet; St. Demetrius in Gabrili in Konavle and St. John the Baptist in Podaca.
Although there are indications that these kind of sanctuaries had appeared even earlier (in St. Peter in the field of Ston), the expansion of this type is most likely connected with the construction of St. Peter the Great, thereby assuming that this church is the first cathedral of Dubrovnik, whose shape and organisation of its sanctuary became the role model that was imitated mainly in southern Dalmatia. A particularly high concentration of such churches is notable in the wider territory of Dubrovnik. The central apse in St. Peter the Great was most likely flanked by two rooms- the pastophoria. Each room ended with a pseudo-apse on the back wall. This element relates the church very closely to central Byzantine churches on the Balkan
peninsula (particularly in present-day Greece and Bulgaria). Reflections of such an organisation of the sanctuary can be recognized in the smaller single-nave churches that were built during the 11th century and
in the rare examples from the 12th/13th century. Considering the political-historical and church-historical context of the creation and expansion of sanctuaries with the three pseudo-apses in the mentioned area, we came to the conclusion that the lateral pseudo- apses most probably imitate- at the associative level- pastophoria, which are indispensable stations of the procession of the Great and Little Entrance in Eastern Orthodox liturgy.
Keywords
Hrčak ID:
165929
URI
Publication date:
20.4.2015.
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