medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
From: Diana Wright <[log in to unmask]>
> Doesn't the nave develop out of the basilica -- and once those 4thC
churches are set, that is simply the pattern? It works admirably for
processions & hierarchical events, not to mention Architecture.
this is the kind of question which is *way* beyond my paygrade.
which is why i decided to Punt and say that a "confluence" of factors must be
invoked to explain such thingies as naves.
one of those factors was, surely, the Momentum of Tradition --specifically,
folks got it into their heads that a church *should look* a certain way; just
like, in the U.S. in the 19th and early 20th centuries banks should *look*
like classical temples.
in the East this "shoulda" is based on a Central Plan model and the
overwhelming majority of churches follow it.
in the West it is based on the Basilican model, and most of the (rather rare)
excpetions can be traced by to other factors which, for some reason, Trumped
the Standard Model for a church scenario.
like Charlemagne's palace chapel at Aachen, a central plan building modeled
on... what...? St. Vitale in Ravenna, almost certainly for "Imperial"
reasons.
or Louis IX's various chapels, which are neither Central Plan nor Basilican
buildings.
this "shoulda" aspect is part of the "Iconography of Architecture", a seeming
oxymoron but, in reality, a very, very important factor which explains (to my
mind and eye) such anomolies as blind arcading --or structurally superfluous
elements like detached columns, or arcading in general (save for 'main
arcades').
as an "imago coeli", it seems that a church in the West simply *must* have a
wonderous multiplicty of arcaded decoration, whether expressed in the stones
themselves or on the stones, as painting.
c
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