A műemlékek sokszínűsége (A 28. Egri Nyári Egyetem előadásai 1998 Eger, 1998)

Előadások / Presentations - Georgiosz PROKOPIU: The polychromy in byzantine art church decoration, origin, form and technique

bolic. In the ancient Greek mysteries, the sphere symbolizes heaven and the omnipresent and all encompassing World. The cube is the geometric analogy of the earth, as Plato writes in the „Timaeus", attributing this teaching to the Pythagoreans. And Pythagoras, in his turn, had been initiated in Egypt. Such theories of geometric cosmology were widely accepted, throughout the East, in Alexandrian and Roman times. The dome became the inevitable image of heaven for all the eastern peoples, who used it in the architecture of their sacred edifices". In the same way, the Byzantine church, the architecture of which became inseparably connected with the shapes of the dome, the cross, and the cube (despite the many variations and morphological experiments it underwent during it s long history) symbolizes the Cosmos, (the Universe) both in its whole and in its parts. This is verified by Byzantine sources and documents - the writings of the Church Fathers, poets, historians, and philosophers from the earliest Christian times until post-Byzantine times without interruption, a fact which leads us to conclude that: a, Symbolic thought was taken up by Christian theology, through the neoplatonic influence and mystic syncretism, prevailing in the mediterranean world, during those same years that Christian doctrine and Byzantine architecture were taking shape. b, Symbolic theories, that saw the church as an image of the universe, had been already formulated by Origen, but acquired widespread diffusion through the works of St. Maximus the Confessor and the Areopagetic School in the 6th century A. D. c, The appeal of this mytical theology to the people, as well as to palace and literary circles, is attested by the Cosmography of Cosmas Indicopleustes, the Syrian hymn about St. Sofia of Edessa and the descriptions of the church as a microcosm, the dome as a celestial sphere, the apse and the ciborium as symbols of Heaven, etc., which are found in profusion in the works of St. Clemens of Alexandria, St. Gregory of Nyssa, St. Cyril, St. Augustine, St. Basil, Eusebius of Caesaria, St. Germain of Constantinople, St. Grecory of Salonica, the historian Procopius, Mich. Psellos, St. Symeon of Salonica, and many others. From the 9th century onwards, the type of the inscribed-cruciform-domed church becomes exclusive in Byzantium, and the care taken to preserve the form of the cube, covered with a dome, testifies to the importance attached to its symbolism. Indeed, the general ideas concerning the form on the church, formulated int he 6th century, are now crystallized in a coherent system. The inscribed cruciform domed type is the commonest type of church during the middle - Byzantine period. In this type of edifice are accumulated the most numerous and most significant symbols of archaic thought, a fact that has definitely contributed to its wide propagation and long life in the Middle Age: The Cross, the square and the cube. All these symbols, so common in Christianism, had in fact a much more extensive appeal on the people of the East, the ancient Greeks and Islam some time later, representing for them the ideas of the quartenary, the four cardinal points and the created material world. Other relevant subjects, closely connected with the symbolism of the dome, are the iconography of the dome and the apse of the sanctuary in the Christian church, the arch, the ciborium over the altar and finally the „omphalion", that is formed on the floor right under the center of the dome. The identification of church and universe becomes particularly evident in this case of the cruciform, domed, and oriented church. The dome being, as mentioned, the symbol of heaven, the four arms of the cross are identified with the four cardinal points, the cosmic regions. The apse is Paradise, located in the East. The center of the building symbolizes the earth below. The orthodox naos becomes the symbolic miniature of the Universe, where painting and architecture work together as a coherent whole: The Pantocrator occupies the central dome, symbolizing the Divine Abode in upper heaven. The angels and prophets follow in a lower circle, while the Virgin in the apse, the cradle of light, mediates between the faithful and the Above. Architec-